


carve our names (into time and space)

by chaoticspaces



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Grounder mythology, I am a slut for mythlogy, Soulmates, but especially mythology as vast and juicy as this, everything that should have happened but didn't, sort of post-305
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:52:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6382900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticspaces/pseuds/chaoticspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say that Wanheda still wanders hundreds of years after the Mountain, born in the stars but bound to the earth. She has become a prayer on the tongues of the people, a plea for the soul's swift journey, a spirit so strong she is one half of the whole that keeps this hard-won peace intact. Legends dare only whisper of her bond to Heda Leksa, Peace-Bringer, whose devotion was so complete that she wrenched herself from an unbreakable cycle just to be with her beloved forever. Their love balances this world, a constant give and take, the dance between Life and Death given form and function.</p><p>But before peace, before Wanheda, there was a girl. Her name was Klark kom Skaikru.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work will be roughly four to five chapters, though entirely possible it might be more depending on what my beta and I come up with. Big props to her, by the way, who worked through it with me even after the garbage that transpired. Consider this my hello to fandom, and my contribution to an amazing collection of fic we've been blessed with.

_“Tell us again about Wanheda.”_

_The sun is low, bathing the room in burning gold, and Heda Lukas settles back into his twisted throne to the stare of twelve sets of eyes. They are all so little around his feet, their tiny hands hard from wielding a blade, and in each and every one of them he sees a legacy far larger than himself._

_“Again?” he chuckles, throwing his sash over his shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep practicing?”_

_But their faces are weary, lined with dirt and blood, and their eyes pleading. “No, please! We want to know!”_

_“Very well. Where should I start?”_

_“The beginning!”_

_Lukas runs his thumb over the engraving in one of the branches and smiles. “The beginning is too far back, my Natblidas. I would have to go back before the bombs, and then even more so. How about we start after the fall of the Mountain?”_

_They lean against each other, hushed and eager, as their mentor folds his hands over his lap._

_“The Heda two deaths before me, Heda Aden, knew Wanheda. Back then, she was still called Klark kom Skaikru, and her people had just committed a great and terrible wrong…”_

 

 A circling vulture casts a swooping shadow on Lexa’s face. It looks like war paint, skewed and haphazard, smeared on in grieving rather than war, but the shade lifts and Lexa’s jaw knots tight.

“We will have to burn them,” she says, and only Clarke sees how her composure cracks a fraction as she gazes upon the field where her people died. “Before the scavengers come.”

“Lexa—“

“Not now, Clarke.” The click of her tongue is harsher than she wants, so she swallows down the glass in her throat and tries again. Her next breath feels like stoking coals in her chest. “I must go speak to Indra. She… she is the only one left. I will see you after.”

Victory stands on the back of sacrifice, Clarke, she said before, but this wasn’t even a sacrifice. It was taken.

Her boots well with blood as she descends into the field. The ground shifts underneath her, gorged and bloated with death, and Clarke hears the ghosts moan as she exhales. She blinks and she’s underground at a table, people dressed in gold and clutching their silver like it will save them, the stench of skin sloughed off and lying in their plates. She blinks again and she’s back, locked gazes with a young boy who has a third eye that stares off into the stars.

It’s strange that the grass doesn’t crunch underfoot, too wet with gore. Clarke looks up to grounder braids and a face she recognizes. Octavia looks like she’s peered into the afterlife and seen nothing but darkness.

“I’m not surprised that Wanheda is the only living person here,” she whispers, but even with all their disagreements, there’s no venom behind it. Clarke tries for a smile but the corpses drag her lips down instead. “Just your luck, huh?”

“I don’t think luck exists, Octavia,” she replies, closing the eyes of a woman with her face smashed down into the dirt. “Not down here.”

Octavia’s head slots well into the juncture between Clarke’s shoulder and neck. She wraps her knuckles in Clarke’s jacket and breathes in the lingering scent of Polis like a balm for the invisible wounds Clarke can see on her spirit. She isn’t much of a healer these days, can’t do anything other than smooth her palms down Octavia’s hair and remind her that there are still people out there who give a damn, that there are people who will make sure justice is pulled from the ashes. Clarke wonders when she became one of them.

When they disconnect, Octavia doesn’t hold that same wariness Clarke’s always brought up, and the rigidity of her shoulders is held by grief instead of distrust.

“Is Indra…”

“The Commander is with her now.”

Octavia almost staggers with the weight of her relief. “Can I see her?”

“I don’t know. We should probably wait until they’re done.”

“Okay… okay,” Octavia breathes in deep and nearly gags, “let’s get out of here.”

Clarke doesn’t smell the rot anymore, but follows anyway.

They’re on the ridge together when Lexa comes back. She’s aged years in the span of minutes, and there’s a sadness in the hollows of her eyes that’s too great to hide. Clarke feels the anger for her, feels it grow with each passing moment she looks out into the killing fields, and when they meet it only takes Lexa a second to know exactly what Clarke wants.

“Come with me,” she says, voice steady, “both of you. I need to know what happened.”

Her hand stops Octavia before she can make it past her. “I’m going to trust you can give a detailed report, _Okteivia kom Skaikru_.”

Despite the bodies rotting below them and the call of the buzzards overhead, Octavia takes the challenge with the closest thing to a smile anyone can muster. “Of course, Heda.”

“Good. Go. Indra will want to see you.”

Lexa takes a spot back on the ridge, where her warriors have begun to pick through the corpses of their friends and build the pyres that will send them off to the stars.

“Every time one threat is quelled, another comes.”

Clarke stands beside her against the morning light, tries not to think that the metal between Lexa’s eyes looks like the boy she saw in the fields.

“Is this what it is to be Heda? Constantly waiting for the next tragedy?”

“This is what it is to be a leader. You shoulder their grief and let it drive you into action.” Lexa meets her with a measured look, and Clarke feels the weight of the legacy she carries crush her into the earth. “You of all people should know that, Ambassador.”

“I haven’t been a leader since the Mountain.”

“Maybe not, but Wanheda follows no one.”

 _Then what’s this?_ Clarke wants to ask, but she sees the gates falling shut on Lexa’s expression and the way she builds her spine back up until she stands just that little bit taller than her. Heda tilts her chin ever so slightly and Clarke knows the moment is gone and buried.

She lets it go, shrugging her cloak tighter around her shoulders. There are bigger things to worry about now.

The ride back to Polis is swift and silent. Indra sits without saying a word, still drenched in the blood of her people, a fire in her eyes like Clarke has never seen. Smoke billows out from behind them like the cloud of a great bomb as the pyres begin their work of carrying the spirits to the sky. They had stayed long enough to see the first be lit, dozens of bodies returning to the earth at a time.

Indra carries no braids back with her. _This wasn’t a fight, Clarke, Lexa had said, it was a slaughter._

They don’t have time to get out of their riding gear before Lexa calls the war council. They’re dirty and tired and stink of death come to rest as they walk in, but Lexa and Indra share an identical tightness in their jaw and the ambassadors see the three hundred shades crying out for justice in Lexa’s stride. Her hands plant on the war table and their squabbling cuts out with an audible wheeze.

“Ambassadors,” she says, voice level and calm, “the reports were correct. Three hundred and six warriors lie dead.”

A murmur starts up, hushed by her raised hand. “Before we plan, we must know what happened. _Okteivia?_ ”

Octavia takes a deep breath and centers herself like Lincoln showed her.

“After Clarke left…”

 

The last of the ambassadors file out, Titus casting one lingering look at the two of them before shutting the door with a solid clang. If Clarke closes her eyes she can pretend it was a few days ago, the Mountain still smouldering, Lexa’s coat pooling on the floor as she swore things they both knew she shouldn’t. It already seems like a lifetime ago.

“When will you ride back?”

On the balcony, the moonlight catches at Lexa’s red sash to ignite it. There’s a streak of ash running from her temple to the other side of her jaw like a scar. She looks… young.

“Tomorrow morning, at dawn,” Clarke replies, running her fingers over the intricate map on the war table. “Will you join me?”

“No,” Lexa says, and she almost sounds regretful. “I have to stay here for the time being. You saw how angry they are, Clarke. The Coalition is calling for blood.”

“And you aren’t?”

“I want the betrayers. Not all of Skaikru.”

 _“Jus drein, jus daun,”_ Clarke murmurs, rounding the table to stand at the entrance to the balcony. Lexa regards her out of the corner of her eye with an expression that’s becoming more and more familiar, though still unreadable. She saw it when she bowed, when she left Clarke’s room, when Clarke vowed justice for the slain. If she was braver, she’d ask what it meant.

Polis stretches out like a vast, glittering blanket below them. Fires from the torches are woven into the darkness like stars in space and Clarke’s seen this view before, peering out of the window in the Ark into the emptiness her ancestors once tried to claim. Her hand rests so close to Lexa’s on the railing that she can feel her heat.

“Perhaps blood must not have blood,” Lexa returns, “but it must have something. My people desire vengeance. I will give them justice instead. _You_ will give them justice.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then your people will die.”

Clarke breathes in the spring air, tinged just the slightest by smoke and salt. “Why are you doing this, Lexa?”

She doesn’t get a response, but Lexa angles her torso towards her, the delicate arch of her neck inclining just a fraction. Her hair shifts and there’s the briefest glimpse of black ink from underneath it, a broken loop.

“Why are you going through all this trouble? Anyone else would have already wiped us off the map by now.”

A raven calls into the night. The firelight on Lexa’s face makes the ash look like an open wound.

“My people have lived for generations on the death of others. They starve themselves in years where the cycle is quiet because they do not believe that ashes can bring new life.”

“Do you?”

“I believe that peace will finally let us flourish. They do not know anything but the cycle, the bloodlust, the _gonplei_. They do not trust there can be anything else. I intend to show them.”

She has heard from many people that Lexa is different. Special. She has already done more than all the Commanders before her, taken the patchwork quilt of this land and sewn the borders together, woven peace into its fabric and bid it to stay. It strains now under the weight of the Sky Crew, threatening to rip its stitches, but Lexa simply digs her feet into the earth and holds the seams alone.

Clarke knows all too well how raw and chapped the knuckles get from gripping on so tightly. Do Lexa’s hands even remember how to uncurl?

“Every one of your people are warriors, Lexa. Will they really give up the fight so easily?”

“We have remained this long by fighting, but… you told me once that life should be about more than just surviving. Do you still believe that?”

Clarke can’t help it – she reaches up and wipes the debris from Lexa’s cheekbone. “I do.”

Lexa’s smallest finger touches Clarke’s, still on the railing. She lets it, just like Lexa lets Clarke draw her palm down to smear the ash off her cheek. “Then trust me.” The corner of her mouth moves under Clarke’s thumb and she remembers what those lips taste like, soaked in sunlight and a magnetic attraction so strong she almost let its pull sweep her away.

She lets her hand fall but keeps the one on the railing, Lexa’s finger hooking into hers like a promise. For the first time since the Mountain, the mantle of Wanheda doesn’t feel like holding up the sky alone.

“Okay.”

Lexa’s lips pull up at the edges, enough for Clarke to know she hears all the implications behind it. She doesn’t say anything, not really, but uncurls her hand and squeezes all of Clarke’s fingers at once before letting go.

“Go get some rest, Ambassador. It’s a long ride tomorrow.”

She’s almost out the door before Clarke finds her tongue again.

“Good night, Lexa.”

And if Lexa stutters at the threshold, one last glance at Clarke who drinks in the moonlight but wears the darkness like a cloak, Clarke doesn’t hold it against her. Not anymore.

She stopped when she found out Lexa doesn’t have any kill marks, either. Just like her.

 

By the time Clarke and Octavia cross through the killing fields, all that’s left is a fine coating of ash and the burnt-out husks of great pyres. Octavia casts her eyes over everything she can, almost trying to convince herself the past few days didn’t happen, but Clarke keeps them trained on the broken circle of the Ark rearing out over the trees.

She lets Octavia go first, climbing through the displaced vent with a quick radio to Kane. She’s been gone far longer than he thought and his anger is tempered with a worry that made him the Chancellor her people needed. Clarke lingers outside the gates on her anxious horse, running her eyes over more metal than she’s seen in months, breathing in the stale smoke from the pyres. It’s an ugly grey smear on an otherwise pristine landscape.

An hour later, Octavia’s head pops up on the wall. She whistles and Clarke urges her horse forward, unflinching, despite eight crosshairs automatically aimed at her forehead. Clarke looks like one of them now, her hair braided and matted and so very long, and it takes Octavia swearing in three different languages to get the gate open. A ripple of whispers follow her slow walk into camp and her jaw flickers from under her oversized hood.

She doesn’t take off her hood until Pike comes, and even then doesn’t get off her horse, levelling a glare strong enough to make the kids she used to lead flinch back automatically.

“It’s been a long time, Clarke,” he says, having to crane his neck to lock eyes from her height, “you’ve made quite a name for yourself.”

“Likewise.”

The guards shuffle anxiously the longer they stare at each other. Clarke lets them, tipping her jaw ever so slightly like someone else she knows, letting the silence stretch out between them. Monroe and Harper won’t meet her eyes.

“Were you sent home? Now that we’re no longer part of the Coalition, I don’t see why—“

“I came to try and fix this mess before you get us all get killed,” she snaps before thinking better, sucking in a deep breath and releasing it. “We should talk about this inside. Octavia?”

“Yes, Wanheda?”

Clarke cuts her a glance, but holds the reprimand when she notices Pike frown.

“Make sure my horse is cared for, and ask Raven if she’s free after the meeting.”

“I’m on it.”

Only then does Clarke dismount; Pike almost seems to grow an inch once he realizes how short she is. Her lips curl at one side. She’s dealt with leaders far, far bigger than him.

The trek to the war room doesn’t take long. People part for her like they do in Polis, though it’s odd to hear her name instead of the titles she’s been given. There are more than a few new faces, wary and distrustful, their hands stained in a way only she can see. Each and every one of the forty-five she sees duck their head in respect and maybe Clarke’s always hated walking in the boots of a leader, but she can’t deny the way they fit.

Kane is there, mulling over the crude map, the circles under his eyes deeper than ever. She puts a gentle hand on his shoulder and squeezes before he even looks up.

“Indra is alive,” she murmurs, “and back at Polis with Lexa. They don’t blame you.”

His shoulders sag a little, but Clarke knows he’ll blame himself until he dies. There’s a fair share of that going around recently.

“I’d say welcome home, Clarke, but I have a feeling you’d rather not be here,” Pike interrupts, surreptitiously (or so he thinks) nodding for two guards to stand at the entrance, guns clutched in their hands.

“You’d be right.”

“Then why don’t we make it quick so you can go clean up? The boys up on the wall thought you were a grounder.”

Clarke tugs at the lock of her matted hair, taking a glance at the far wall. There are softly glowing maps, scribbled and scratched out, calculations sitting next to arrows and estimations. A thick black X runs through a nearby Grounder settlement. They’ve been busy.

She remembers Pike from Earth Skills. He was always no-nonsense, even up in the sky.

“The Commander is coming,” she says as plainly as possible. “A week, maybe a little more. As you can imagine, she’s not happy.”

“Good. It means our message was received loud and clear.”

“You just killed three hundred of their warriors without provocation, Pike. In the night, in silence, under the guise of peace. Do you really think that’s any way to go about securing a future?”

“They attacked us first at the Mountain!”

“You know that was _Ice Nation_. And in case you didn’t hear, they have a new leader now; the Commander was going to leave the corpse of their queen on Arkadia’s doorstep as an offering!”

Clarke pinches the bridge of her nose as the guards heft their weapons just that little bit higher. They’re not like Lexa’s personal guards, who tolerate her yelling with an impressive display of patience. If only she could have taken them along.

_They’d probably be killed like the others._

“Listen,” she sighs, at once so very tired, “you’re the Chancellor now. Congratulations. I don’t envy you at all. I’ve just been sent to say that the Commander is willing to be merciful, but she isn’t going to back down. She wants justice for her fallen.”

“And what does that _justice,_ ” he nearly sneers the word, “entail, exactly?”

A beat. Clarke glances to Bellamy. “The Sky Crew traitors.”

In the shadows by the wall, the boy stiffens. He hasn’t taken his gaze from Clarke since the moment she stepped in, furs and braids and the barest remnants of black paint lining her lower lids, and she wonders what he sees.

“Traitors? The only _traitors_ here are the ones that stand in the way of Arkadia taking its freedom back from the Grounders. The ten of us that went out there did what we had to in order to secure a better future for our people. You did the same in the Mountain.”

“No,” Clarke says frostily, never taking her eyes from Bellamy, “I did _the only thing_ that I could. You did the opposite of that.” An explosive bout of murmuring begins between the assembled guards. “The Commander is calling for a barricade until Arkadia takes care of the rebel traitors inside the camp. She’ll surround us within the week. Once they’re dealt with, she’ll leave without laying a finger on Arkadia’s walls.”

Pike lips curl up to expose his teeth. “I am Chancellor. We _are_ Arkadia.”

“And if you want what is best for your people, you’ll give yourself up. She’s going to burn it to the ground if you don’t.”

“She’s so convinced she’ll win,” Pike growls, “but we killed three hundred of their men without a single loss of our own. We have guns, we have enough bomb material to make a new valley, and the Mountain could still have missiles—“

“Let the dead rest, Chancellor,” Clarke says, a shadow falling over her face, “you’ve done enough.”

Kane steps between them before it can escalate. Bellamy hovers by his shoulder but he doesn’t even spare him a glance; Kane angles himself away from them, baring his back to Pike and Bellamy and locking eyes with her instead.

“We can talk more about this later,” he interrupts, laying a gentle hand on her sternum, “Clarke’s had a long ride to warn us. I’m sure she could use a bath and some food.”

“And some new clothes,” Pike agrees, but Clarke steps away.

“I’m fine in these.”

Kane leans in close. “We’ll come get you when there’s more to talk about. Go find Abby.”

The ground has been good to him. Clarke manages a smile for the first time since she returned, squeezes once at his wrist. “Thank you. If anyone can get them to see sense, it’s you.”

“I don’t know about that. _Wanheda_ has some pretty serious weight around here.”

She ignores the way Pike eyes them, sweeping out of the room without a backwards glance. The guards let her go and she’s so close to finding Raven and her hidden stash of moonshine before a hand takes her wrist and tugs her down a side corridor. She lets it, knowing exactly who that grip belongs to, the same calluses that overlaid her knuckles as it helped her pull that lever what seems like a lifetime ago.

Clarke finds herself in a bare metal room. She doesn’t spin as the door slams, just takes her time to glance over the crates and chairs, spying a screwdriver with a sharp point before she turns.

Not for the first time she notices how little he and Octavia now share, the slant of their jaws and the part of their hair different. Bellamy has shadows cut into the hollows of his cheekbones that he and Clarke trade like unwanted party favours. She doesn’t smile, but he looks like he’s forgotten how.

“What do you want, Bellamy?”

“That’s it? No _hello, how have you been since I left you?_ ”

She gestures to his guard jacket, a little patch above his left shoulder bright and out of place. Pike’s insignia. “Octavia filled me in . You’ve been doing just fine.”

“That’s what she said, huh? I guess I should expect as much from the mighty _Wanheda_.”

“Don’t,” she snaps, and takes some measure of comfort in how he immediately shuts his mouth. “They gave me the title. I didn’t ask for it.”

“You’ve embraced it.” Bellamy nods to the heavy woven cloak she still wears, the trim carrying the faintest hints of Lexa’s scent. She hasn’t taken it off since she left Polis. “I didn’t recognize you at first.”

A lie. Bellamy can always find Clarke, no matter where she is or who she’s mixed in with. He tries to forget, to pretend otherwise, but Clarke’s spent too much time reading the body language of someone far less expressive than him. Even his hands flexed when they locked eyes over Pike’s table.

“I had to. They respect Wanheda, not Clarke.”

He comes closer. Clarke can see the ghosts under his eyes and wonders how many new ones live there since she saw him last. “Then you should’ve come _home_. People here love Clarke. They can forgive her for leaving.”

“I don’t need forgiveness from you, Bellamy,” she snaps. “Is that what you want? An _I’m sorry_? I thought you’d understand why I had to go.”

“I do, Clarke,” he says, but his eyes flash and she knows he doesn’t, “but I was there too. I pulled the lever just like you, and I didn’t get to leave.”

“Because you weren’t the leader! They didn’t expect _you_ to fix things and make it better, like I can just… suddenly make things okay. That was all on me. You may have helped, but I’m the one who carries the Mountain.”

“Jasper would disagree.” He comes closer now; Clarke bumps against the back of a crate. Her hand automatically reaches back, fingers curling over the screwdriver before she catches herself. This is Bellamy. He’s not the enemy. “Monty would disagree. _I_ would disagree.”

“Good thing I’m not in charge anymore, then.”

“Yeah,” he says softly, “it is. People die when you are.”

His hand pins her left wrist to the crate. His chest is nearly against hers and Clarke doesn’t remember moving, only that there’s metal against his neck and his next breath dies in his throat as she presses it up.

“Don’t you dare push your guilt onto me,” Clarke hisses, “not after what you’ve done.”

Bellamy swallows and a thin rivulet of blood runs where his jaw bobs down. “I’m not—“

“You want to play the tortured soul? Fine. You want to put the Mountain at my feet, pretend I’m the only one walking on skeletons? You can do that, too. I’ve spent months doing the same thing.” Her left hand pushes off the crates until they’re so close she can see his eyelashes flutter as her breath washes hot over his face. “But don’t think, even for a second, that you killing three hundred of Lexa’s warriors is somehow justified. My choice was to save our people. Yours was just for yourself.”

He lets her go. She looks back only once and those eyes aren’t the ones he recognizes; dark, sharp, halfway to the grave.

“I thought you knew better,” Wanheda says quietly, “but I guess we were both wrong.”

He sinks to the floor alone.

 

_The sun has disappeared. Heda Lukas finishes lighting the last candle, its light washing tongues of flame upon the great painted murals that spiral to the ceiling of the throne room. On it he sees Polis, Arkadia, and the two women who stand at their gates and let their linked hands be the chains that bind the cities together._

_“Please, Heda, keep going!”_

_The story has been told many times over the years, but never like this, remembered as it had fallen from Heda Aden’s tongue. Heda Lukas smiles, beckoning them closer, and their little hands wind in the bare branches of his throne._

_“Patience, little ones,” he chides, letting his sash tickle the fingers of one, “the story is just beginning. Where were we?”_

_“Wanheda had returned to Skaikru,” the eldest says, shuffling until his knees are pressed against Heda’s shins, “but they wouldn’t listen. Were they listening to the Herald?”_

_“Don’t spoil the story for the others, Shar,” Heda warns, “but no, the Herald comes much later. For now, it is just Wanheda, the traitors, and the few she can call her friends. You see, she had to move very carefully not to anger the traitor’s Heda, who had long feared her power and the respect that it brought…”_

Raven’s humor is even sharper than usual, but she hugs Clarke hard and doesn’t let go for a long time. If Clarke notices the way Raven leans on her, her arms looped around her shoulders, she doesn’t mention it.

“I can’t believe you’re not dead,” was the first thing Raven said, rubbing Clarke’s fur vest between appraising fingers.

Clarke gave a humorless smile. “Me neither.”

There’s no more friction between them. Finn’s loss still hurts, but it’s a dull echo of what it used to be. They raised a cup of canteen alcohol to the clearing where he died on the first night and that was that.

Three days later, Clarke tosses a few faded schematics onto Raven’s workbench.

“Skipping foreplay, Princess?” Raven’s brow, arched curiously, furrows soon after. “Where did you get these?”

“Polis libraries. They don’t know how to read them.”

The mechanic holds it up to the light, spins around once in her chair. They’ve held up remarkably well for a hundred years and a nuclear war between them. “It’s a radio.”

“Not just any radio. A powerful one.”

“I can see that.” Raven lowers the schematics, and all Clarke can see are her suspicious eyes. “Why do you want it?”

“Look, can you make it or not?”

“Oh no, you don’t get to do that, Clarke. If you want it, you’re going to tell me why.”

The mess hall is rowdy and full of unfriendly faces. Clarke takes Raven by the sleeve and gently coaxes her up, mindful to take the schematics as they leave. Raven slips them into the pocket of her jacket and bats away Clarke’s hand when her limp staggers her.

They slip outside to the well. The sun is hot and beats down on their shoulders, but Clarke only sweeps her cloak to the side as she reaches for the bucket. Smoke still lingers on the breeze, and she found ash behind her ear this morning. If she could, she’d jump from the Mountain again to wash it all away.

“I need to stop Pike,” she says as Raven stoops to drink, her ponytail falling wild and loose over her shoulder. “He’s going to get us killed.”

“A radio will stop him?”

“It’ll help.”

Raven looks at her, long and quiet and measured. She’s changed in the months Clarke’s been away – they all have. “Who’s it for, Clarke?”

She doesn’t try to pretend. “Lexa.”

“Clarke…”

“I know you don’t trust her, Raven. I wouldn’t if I were you.”

“But you do.”

“I…” She wants to say _maybe, I don’t know_ , but the sun catches the metal of the bucket and she remembers Lexa’s eyes, soft and gleaming in the dark, their hands clasped and warm against each other’s. “Yes. I do.”

Raven blows air out of her nose like it’ll take the burdens off her shoulders. “I knew you’d pull something like this the second you got back, y’know? It’s not like you to just sit still. This damn plotting of yours is the only reason we got out of the Mountain alive.”

“You…” Clarke glances to her hip before she can catch herself, “you don’t blame me?”

“I could blame you for a lot of things, Princess, but this definitely isn’t one of them.” Raven stuffs her hand in her pocket, running her fingers along the edges of the blueprints. “Do you really think you can stop this?”

“I have to try.”

A guard passes behind them; Raven shoots a sweet smile that quickly falls back into a grim line. “I’m not stupid. I know they’ll wipe us out the second Lexa decides it. But the longer this goes on, the more people Pike will drag with him.”

They both glance up to the wall, where a familiar head of unruly dark hair watches the horizon. Clarke’s lip curls on instinct before she can stop it.

“I don’t like it,” Raven admits, “but I don’t like most of your plans, and I haven’t died yet.”

The wince on her face as she pushes off the well is a stark reminder of just how close she came. Raven sighs, the circles under her eyes almost purple against her skin, and sticks out her hand. “I’m with you, Clarke. Even if I might regret it later.”

Clarke goes to take it but Raven draws it away at the last second and loops her arm around Clarke’s neck instead, drawing her into a hug that doubles as a choke. Clarke panics for a second, reaching for Raven’s weak knee, but catches herself just as she wraps her shaking fingers around the brace. Raven releases her as if burned, not letting Clarke hide the animal fear that has yet to settle.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Raven says, her fingers light on her elbow, “I didn’t—“

Clarke’s jaw flickers. “It’s okay,” she says, but her eyes have gone so dark that Raven almost takes a step back. “I just…”

“Yeah, I know. I get it.”

She means it. Clarke tries for a smile, finds it doesn’t stretch as awkwardly as she thought.

“You don’t have to do this alone, you know.” Raven adjusts the straps on her brace that were knocked out of alignment. “I know it seems like everything’s gone to shit, but you have allies here. You just gotta look.”

“Are you getting sentimental on me, Raven?”

“Shut up, Griffin.”

There’s a moment of silence as they make their way back inside; they pass Jaha peddling his silicone heaven and Clarke doesn’t miss the way Raven’s eyes linger. Their eyes lock and Clarke swears she sees a flicker of red behind him. The acrid tang of burnt rubber blooms on the back of her tongue just as he turns and the color disappears.

“I know you’re tempted, but I have a bad feeling,” Clarke murmurs, spitting into the grass. It doesn’t go away. “You shouldn’t.”

“I won’t,” Raven returns, a particularly heavy limp making her grimace, “I just wish it worked as much as he believes it does. He won’t leave me alone about it.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

Raven’s smile is a vicious slash of teeth. “If anyone can get Jaha to shut up, it’s Wanheda.”

The title doesn’t sting nearly as much as it did coming from Bellamy.

Clarke deposits Raven back at her bench with a smile that comes easier than when she arrived.

“So…” she hums, “can you make the radio?”

Raven audibly scoffs, an offended fist hitting Clarke’s shoulder. She doesn’t flinch this time.

“You’re asking _me_ if I can make something? Please. I’ll have you talking to your Grounder by Friday.”

Her smirk only widens when she catches the flush of red from inside Clarke’s hood. “Come by for drinks again, yeah? Monty would love to see you. He’s got a special batch just for you.”

The thought is a pleasant one. “Of course. I miss him.”

“And he misses you. We all do.” Raven clears her throat, swatting at her hands that rest on the workbench. “Get out of here, Griffin. Go do whatever Ambassadors do.”

“They listen to engineers who try really hard to pretend they don’t care, apparently.”

_“Go.”_

 

Clarke puts off the moonshine a little longer for another visit. The medical bay buzzes with noise, the hum of workers in the hive. Her cloak licks the floor behind her and its heavy weight leaves a blanket of silence in its wake. She wonders if this is how Lexa feels wherever she goes, not a person but an ideal, the responsibility of every single life in this room in her hands. Her steps are gunshots against the metal.

Jackson sees her first. He beckons her through the threshold with a soft smile and blood on his gloves. A young boy clutches his arm, red seeping through the cracks of his fingers – she blinks and she sees the boy on the killing fields, his third eye dark and peering and spreading and – another blink and it’s gone.

“He’ll be fine,” he says, and Clarke breathes until she believes it, “he caught himself on the side of the wall. Your mom’s almost done.”

Abby’s hair scatters across her face as she stitches with deft, fluid strokes. She remembers the pattern; Clarke was eleven when Abby taught her, the weave in and out, the drag of thread through flesh. Her hands were strong overtop her own and steadied the shake of Clarke’s small fingers.

They don’t shake anymore. It stopped the second she left the Mountain.

“Why was he on the wall?”

“Patrolling. He tripped on a wire.”

Clarke frowns. “He’s too young to be a guard.”

“His mother died in the Mountain. He wants to help Pike.”

The boy looks at her with an awe that makes her skin itch. “You agree with this?”

There’s a look in Jackson’s eye she doesn’t like. Distant, calm. Knowing. “Whatever helps ease his pain.” It’s gone before she can make sense of it.

Once the stitches are done, he nearly launches himself out of the bed. Clarke’s hand twitches to the knife at her thigh before she can stop herself. The shame of it burns her fingertips.

“You… you’re Clarke, right? Wanheda?” His tongue wraps clumsily around the Grounder language. The syllables sound clogged with blood. “You broke the Mountain?”

Her smile feels paper-thin. “I did what I had to do.”

He curls his little fists until they go white. “I want to grow up to be just like you, so I can show those Grounders who’s the real Commander around here!”

A hand on her arm. Abby’s perfume curls around her like a shield. “Now, Jacob, don’t go aggravating those stitches. Rest for at least a week.”

“Yes, Chance—Doctor Griffin.”

“Good. Go on, now.”

She’s being led and her mother helps her down onto a chair, cradling her cheeks in work-roughened palms. “Breathe, Clarke.” Everything feels like she’s swimming through blood, through rot, through decay that’s rubbed itself black onto her bones like a scar. But this pain runs deeper than that and she can’t shake it off, not even with Abby whispering into her ear, and she imagines Ark children running in laughing circles around blackened Grounder pyres.

So she sits in the loop of her mother’s arms like she did when Finn died, her fingers hooked in the worn fabric of her shirt. She doesn’t cry, doesn’t think she’s capable, but shakes and shakes and shakes until her bones rattle out of place. The Mountain sits oddly on her crooked spine but she lets Abby take the weight for a moment, long enough for them both to feel it, and Clarke wonders if her mother has scars like Raven. Or maybe like her.

Abby hums so close to her ear it blocks out the noise from outside. For a few minutes it’s just them, Abby’s fingers carding through her wild hair, her ribs steady and sure under Clarke’s palms. The rhythm is slow and soothing and reminds her if she hadn’t done the things she did, these bones would be home to flowers that flourished in the protective cage of her mother’s chest.

Clarke sits up slowly, heavily, resting her elbows on her knees. Her eyes are raw from Abby’s shirt and there’s an age that doesn’t match her face, a soul too heavy for the body that carries it.

“Sorry,” she croaks, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Abby tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

“Don’t be.” She runs a rag down Clarke’s neck, pale and clammy. “Better?”

“A little.”

She accepts the water bottle from Jackson, but only takes a sip or two. Abby eyes her. “Does this happen often?”

“No,” she answers truthfully, “not anymore.”

Whatever Abby sees satisfies her. She coaxes a shaky Clarke up from behind the plastic blinds, away from the medical bay and down the short hallway that leads to her private quarters. Her grip on her arm is tight but Clarke is too tired to pull away.

They settle on the bed and Clarke leans her shoulder into Abby. It’s been a long, long time since they’ve been this close and Abby relishes in it, hooks those strong fingers against Clarke’s hip and sits. She barely got the chance to say goodbye at Polis; she’ll wait as long as she has to.

“I…” Clarke clears her throat. “I didn’t recognize him. The kid.”

“Farm Station.” Abby feels a shudder run through Clarke’s spine. “His parents were killed at the Mountain.”

“How many orphans are there?”

“Clarke, you don’t have to—“

_“How many?”_

Abby flexes her hand against Clarke’s side. “Seventeen.”

“Is that why he joined the guard?”

“He… trusts Pike. A lot of people do.”

“Do you?”

A sour look is her only response.

They listen to the muffled sounds of Arkadia outside. It’s much louder than it ever had been in space, much livelier. Still, after months with dirt under her feet and blue sky above her, it feels less like home than it ever had.

“Why are you doing this, Clarke?” Abby sighs out after a moment. Clarke remembers saying the exact same thing only a few days ago. “You don’t have to be in charge of everyone now. You’ve earned your rest, after… after the Mountain.”

 _I bear it so they don’t have to._ Dante’s voice is more understanding than she remembers.

“You turned me into a leader when you sent me to the ground,” she says carefully, “I can’t stop caring just because you say so. They’re my people too, Mom. Pike is going to get every last one of them killed if I don’t do something. I’m the only one that _can_ do something. I have to.”

“There has to be another way.”

She stands up, pacing the small length of her mother’s room. Clarke’s never had this conversation before, never _needed_ to – Lexa understood better than anyone ever could how deeply these ties can bind, how one person can tear themselves apart for others and still not be enough. Sometimes she wonders if Lexa even knows where Heda ends and she begins anymore. Living with Wanheda for months has almost smothered her, but years? A lifetime?

Too much.

She comes to a stop before the lone desk in the room. Papers neatly piled and organized, stuffed into old folders. They never were alike. Clarke runs her fingers along the metal.

“There isn’t.”

Abby gets up. Clarke tamps down the urge to reach for her knife, curling her fingers against the desk. Something falls on the floor.

“Clarke, I can’t watch you torture yourself! Look in a mirror. I know you don’t sleep very much, you hardly bathe, and you jump whenever someone looks at you wrong! I’ve seen enough people with the same symptoms to know—“

Something cracks. Clarke whirls on her heel, her eyes wide and wild and red.

“Yeah, you’ve _seen_. You don’t _feel_. I’ve been on the ground less than a year and I’ve almost killed a thousand people, Mom! I pulled those levers! I let that missile fall! If I don’t save Arkadia, what was all that for? What will they have died for?”

Abby takes a step forward, stutters and stalls, stops at the center of the room. One of her hands hang loosely between them. “Honey, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t care whose fault it is anymore. It happened and we can’t take it back, and now I have to live with it and you have to let me. Just like you live with your choices.”

 _Like Dad_ hangs thick in the air between them. Abby swallows, but it’s bitter going down. Clarke’s eyes are dark and wet but her jaw rises in a movement that’s decidedly not her own, a learned defiance from someone else.

She barely recognizes her anymore.

When Abby steps back, Clarke all but collapses back onto the desk. Her hand falls on a soft canvas bag and knocks it onto the ground. Chips spill everywhere.

“What…” she crouches, picks one up, “what are these?”

“That’s what Jaha’s feeding his people.” Abby is raw and wounded and Clarke would feel guilty if she wasn’t too tired to be anything at all. “It dissolves when they eat it. It blocks pain receptors, but… it erases memories, too. I took them before he could do more damage.”

Clarke flips it around. She’s seen that symbol before, half-hidden by a curtain of Lexa’s long hair. She slips it into her pocket.

“Don’t worry,” she says at her mother’s reproachful look, “I won’t take it. I want Lexa to see it.”

She doesn’t wait for the questions. Clarke hovers by the door and flips the cloak back over her head. The red-eyed stranger looking back at her makes Abby so unbelievably sad.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I just… I can’t do this. Not yet.”

The door hisses shut, and she misses Abby’s quiet _I’m sorry, too._

 

Raven’s radio is ready the day Lexa arrives.

Her warriors crest the hill as a great dark mass, the mesh of metal and leather glinting in the spring sun. They walk over the graves of their fallen families with whispered prayers and ash sticks to the bottoms of their boots.

Even from the wall, Clarke can see Lexa. It’s hard not to, set upon a great two-headed horse whose hooves churn the ground into dust. Her heart jumps a little and she pretends not to know why.

Farm Station have worked themselves into a frenzy. The guards prowl the walls like caged beasts, muttering into their radios, clutching their guns with white-knuckled grips. The engines roar to life inside their trucks. Those who don’t fight cluster to the edges of their houses with the air of refugees, not villagers.

Bellamy joins her over the gate, his gun hanging carelessly from his shoulder.

“Why haven’t they attacked yet?”

Clarke barely spares him a glance. “They aren’t going to. They want to talk first.”

“How do you know?”

“I know her. She’s been fighting the Coalition for a week straight to spare us. She wouldn’t be here if she’d lost.”

Bellamy’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t say anything. The army stops advancing and remains nothing but an indistinct black blur against a burning background. They stretch out into the trees, back over the hills, and their smouldering fires take over for the pyres that have only just stopped smoking.

Just a few short months ago, she was treated to the exact same view.

“Bellamy!”

Pike peers up at the wall in full armour, his eyebrows quirking for a moment as he catches Clarke’s eyes before his soldier’s. “We’ve received a hail - they want to talk. You’re coming with me.”

“Sir, are you sure going is the best option? They may try and hurt you.”

“Their Commander is going to be there,” Pike grunts, “it’ll put the whole thing in jeopardy if someone of matching status isn’t there for us.”

_You’ll never be as great as her._

“I’m going with you,” Clarke interrupts, sliding down the ladder and landing squarely in front of Pike. “You need me.”

“Do we?”

“You don’t know their language or their customs. I’m still officially the ambassador between the Sky People and the Coalition.”

“A defunct title, but you have a point.” Pike scans her up and down, eyes narrowed. “Do you think this is a trap?”

“No,” Clarke answers automatically.

“Why?”

“The Commander doesn’t want to provoke war. Killing you while pretending to be peaceful will do just that.”

“We both know what they think of peace.”

 _“Jus drein jus daun_ is no longer their way. You heard the announcement.”

Pike runs his fingers across the bullets on his chest, counting each as he goes. “I heard someone that was too scared to retaliate. But I agree, you’ll come with us. We need a reliable translator.”

“Sir, I don’t think—“

“Are you questioning my orders, soldier?”

Bellamy looks away, his hands tightening on his gun. “No, sir.”

“Good. Then hurry up, we leave in fifteen minutes. I want this over within the hour.”

Clarke’s hand goes to the inside pocket of her cloak and runs her fingers along the edges of the new radio. Raven’s knuckles were red with electrical burns but her smirk was genuine, smug and triumphant and all the things she used to be. The antenna is a little crooked, but no one is perfect.

_Give this to the Commander. There’s a twin waiting under your bed. She could go halfway to Polis and still get reception on this baby._

Bellamy goes for her arm but she knows better this time, slipping out of his grasp before he can anchor her down. There’s a flash of hurt that Clarke from four months ago would have apologized for, but that Clarke laid down in the wilderness and left her body for the scavengers. This Clarke, who isn’t really Clarke at all, simply sets her jaw and lets her cloak fall back around her body.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asks stiffly. “Last time we tried a peace meeting it didn’t go so well.”

Anya’s face swims in her mind’s eye. Sometimes her head still throbs where she was struck, but sometimes she remembers snatches of her smile and wonders how different things could have been. How strong Anya’s grip was around her forearm, and how she had to wish her own soul safe passage because Clarke didn’t know the words.

“And why was that?” she responds, raising a tired brow.

They both glance over to the well where Jasper takes a drink. He looks like shit, the angles under his shirt sharp and unkind. The tendons in his neck jut out when he swallows. Sometimes it seems like the spear to the chest buried a poison deep within him that took months to seep out.

Clarke licks her dry lips. Her cloak feels heavy all of a sudden, the weight of her rank becoming tangible. “Just… respect the talks for what they are, Bellamy. Talks. No one needs to get hurt today.”

She doesn’t mention what they’re bargaining for. She doesn’t have to. The ten stakes being raised on the crest of the hill, their shadows long and ragged, do a better job than her words ever could.

Clarke spends the entire short ride out to the meeting place trying to breathe. She can feel Bellamy’s eyes on her but she ignores him, head in her hands, the vibration of the truck underneath her too much like the dropship as it came screaming to the ground. She closes her eyes and she’s seventeen again, her mother’s scent lingering on her collar.

She hasn’t been that person for a while now. Clarke gulps in a breath of stale air and lets it out, doing the _thing_ that Lexa always does when she turns back into Heda with nothing more than a look. She hasn’t perfected it yet, because while Heda exists in the slope of Lexa’s mouth and the flick of her fingers, Wanheda lives almost entirely in Clarke’s eyes. It’s hard to force, but she tries, sucking in a lungful of air and holding it for just a split second to reach into that place she tries to ignore.

It comes almost too quickly, too willingly. Wanheda steps into her skin but she never left it, not really, and with each day that passes it hurts a little less. One day it might even be bearable. The thought brings a cold, guilty chill.

Her eyes open and meet Bellamy’s. He’s seen that look before, metal against his neck just begging for an excuse to bite into bone. When he can’t quite hide his flinch, Clarke smirks.

The sudden burst of sunlight from the open door wipes it off her face.

They stagger out onto the field. All the weapons are left in the truck and Bellamy’s hand rests uselessly on where his gun usually is. He doesn’t try to hide his discomfort, his eyes jumping from her to the cluster of Grounders at the center of the field and back again.

It’s an open plain with no archers in sight. Still, he remembers.

Lexa’s eyes flicker almost imperceptibly as she comes into view, half-hidden behind Bellamy’s protective body, but Clarke sees it as starkly as she does the tenseness of Pike’s shoulders. She smiles, an upturn at one corner of her mouth, and Lexa relaxes. _I’m okay._

I’m glad.

“Chancellor Pike,” Lexa says smoothly, her jaw lifting just a fraction. “I’m pleased you came.”

Pike runs his eyes along her, the buckles and clasps that litter her armor, the war-paint slashed in broad strokes across her temples. Her presence makes her seem even taller, shrouding her like Clarke’s gifted cloak. “I figured it would be in bad taste to rebuff the Commander when you’ve got an army surrounding us.”

“Simply a precaution,” she nods her head sideways, where an array of men and women gather nervously by the horses, “my ambassadors wanted it closer.”

 _“Or not there at all,”_ one of them mutters, cowed by Lexa’s withering glare.

“Can we just hurry this up?” Bellamy grunts, impatient, and does his best not to shrink as Lexa turns her gaze onto him.

“You are not in charge, _Belomi kom Skaikru,_ ” she spits the last part in the closest thing to a curse Clarke’s ever heard, “but I suppose we can. _Wanheda_ has brought you my terms?”

“We reject them,” Pike says immediately. The ambassadors mutter between themselves, soft, hissing words that Clarke doesn’t bother to translate. Their tone makes it clear enough.

Lexa studies him, and the reflection from the sunlight gives her a third eye. It’s blinding, looking somewhere much further than here. “You would condemn your people to death?” she says softly, quietly, a deadly turn to her lips. Only Clarke can hear the disappointment.

“What about blood must not have blood, Commander? Was that for show?”

Lexa’s eyes go hard. “You were the ones who slaughtered my warriors, Chancellor. You were the ones who built a city on land that does not belong to you. You dare question me after all the forgiveness I have shown?”

“ _Forgiveness?_ Giving my own people over to be slaughtered is _forgiveness?_ ”

“Another would have watered the ground with the blood of your people long ago. You may have fallen from the stars, but you exist on the ground now, just like any of us. If you truly believe that asking only for the traitors after what you have done is not merciful, then perhaps I have misjudged the _Skaikru_.”

Pike takes a step forward. Clarke shoulders between them before anything can be done, her fingertips hovering just above Lexa’s chest-plate. It presses against them with her inhale.

 _“They were right, Klark,”_ Lexa mutters, _“he will not listen.”_

_“I need more time, Lexa. I have a plan.”_

Well, no. She has an idea. But Bellamy snarls _English_ and Lexa’s eyes flash before settling, just once, so quickly she could almost have imagined it. But she knows Lexa, knows her endless patience is waning the longer they stand under the beating sun. If they were alone she’d put a hand on her wrist, thumb against her pulse to join them together, but all she can do give Bellamy a scathing look and pray Lexa’s restraint isn’t as frayed as her own.

 _“Beja, Heda,”_ she says, and Lexa sucks a quiet breath of air through her nose.

“What is it you want, Chancellor Pike? Speak true.”

He crosses his arms. “Enough land to sustain my people.”

“And how much is that?”

“Fifteen kilometers around.”

All of a sudden, the ugly black X on Pike’s map makes sense. Clarke whips her head around. “There’s a village there!”

“He knows.” Lexa’s voice is cold, but her eyes don’t change. “You would force them out?”

Pike doesn’t respond. One of the ambassadors barks something harsh and Lexa snaps a rebuttal, the force in her voice nearly sending him to the ground.

“I have lost many villages to _Skaikru,_ ” she says, “many people. The dead are gone, Chancellor Pike, but they are loud. Louder than the living. You stand on their ghosts, ghosts that you created, and ask for the land of their children?”

“Let us expand,” he says earnestly, “give us this and there will be no more dead. Show us you know what mercy really means.”

But this next smile is Heda, not Lexa, and it is both mirthless and merciless in turn. “I heard that once from another clan. _Azgeda_. I let them go and they gave me nothing but corpses. I will not make the same mistake again.”

“Commander—“

“The blockade remains. Any _Skaikru_ found outside of it will be killed. If you will not give yourself to justice, then your people will pay the price until you do.”

At her gesture, two guards come forth with a large wooden box. Its intricate carvings spiral out and around and the guards sink into the earth under its weight. It falls with a heavy thump.

 _“Wanheda_ ,” Lexa says, and her voice has lost its steel, “this came for you from King Roan of Azgeda. He says it shows not only his loyalty, but gives answer to a great and pressing question.”

“What is it?”

“We do not know. It is yours to open.”

At Clarke’s nod, the guards slide the chest open. A shadow on the shelf writhes and thrashes away from the sunlight. Clarke catches a glimpse of red hands and torn clothing and furious, feral eyes.

Emerson all but tumbles out of the chest to get to her - Lexa is there before he can make it more than a foot, landing a vicious kick to his temple before grinding him into the grass with her foot. He screams into the dirt as she holds him without mercy; Clarke’s heard those howls before, echoing through the broken Mountain.

“You,” Clarke hisses, and the eyes that rise up to meet her are those of a trapped, broken animal. Emerson shrieks through his gag and doesn’t stop until Lexa presses on his throat. Even then his hands open and close like he could will Clarke’s neck between them.

“Who is that?” Pike demands, peering over the shoulder of Lexa’s guard.

“The reason the Mountain was destroyed,” Clarke lets the last several months seep into her inflection, the anguish she’s been carrying like a seed finally blooming in her throat, “he’s the only one that could have known the codes.”

Bellamy lunges only to be caught by another guard. Pike starts shouting orders until the people in the trucks scramble out, drawn to the commotion, and the rest of Lexa’s group stiffens with thinly veiled tension. Bellamy looks like he’ll break free and snap Emerson’s neck himself, but the man only has eyes for Clarke as he writhes and bucks under Lexa’s foot.

The newcomers look ready to fight and Clarke steps squarely between them. She won’t let this unravel, not after it’s taken so long and so much to even get here.

“He will come to Arkadia and pay for what he has done!” Pike roars, but Lexa only tilts her head.

“He was gifted to _Wanheda_ , not you, Chancellor. She decides his fate.”

But isn’t that how it’s always been? The destiny of Emerson’s people had been to die and it had been Clarke’s hands that did it, her fingernails dirty with his grief and their blood that is never able to be bleached away. Wanheda bathes in it. Clarke just wishes she could be clean.

Lexa looks at her expectantly, the slight uptick of her brows the only betrayal of expression. Emerson still screams under her foot and she presses harder until the bones in his neck grind, until all she needed was a little more pressure and Clarke’s last living ghost would finally haunt only her memory.

But memory is fluid and flows deep; the chasm the Mountain left in her floods with black water and chains the weight of three hundred and eighty two corpses to her ankles. Clarke’s been drowning for months.

“I…” Clarke grits her teeth. All she wants to do is break open his bones and take the marrow that doesn’t belong to him, run her black fingernails through his hollows and laugh as his body turns to dust under the sun. It’s what he deserves for stealing things he had no right to tarnish, for the blood of the missing forty-eight that now runs through his veins and slicks the sole of Lexa’s shoe.

But it’s hard to think with Lexa’s gaze on her temple; Lexa, who has lost much more to him than Clarke, who waits patiently with a heavy foot on his neck, who trusts her decision to be the right one. Who ignores the way the other Ambassadors whisper so that Clarke may make her own choice. “I don’t know.”

“What?” Bellamy pushes forward until his hand is hot on her wrist. “Clarke, he has to die!”

“He will be dealt with according to our laws,” Lexa says, delivering a brutal blow to Emerson’s temple. His screaming finally stops with a _crunch_. “Death or banishment.”

“He killed my people! He killed Gina! He has to answer for his crimes!”

Clarke steps in front of him. His grip grinds the bones in her wrist but his fingers shake so hard it travels up to his shoulder.

“They’re our people, Bellamy, not just yours. What you want to do is vengeance, not justice.”

“He’s the last one that tried to kill us, Clarke. Blood must have blood isn’t finished yet. Isn’t that what you want?”

Clarke’s eyes meet Lexa’s. She remembers Polis, the scent of smoke and spring, and Lexa’s eyes in the torchlight. “Maybe it isn’t about what I want.”

Lexa’s lips flicker into a ghost of a smile. “I will keep him here while you think, _Wanheda_. But I must know your answer by moonrise today. It is unwise to keep a wounded animal next to the axe for too long.”

“You’ll have it.”

“Good. Then the last Mountain Man will remain a prisoner of the Trikru until the ceremony.”

It’s a clear dismissal, and Clarke climbs back into the truck both lighter and heavier than before. It isn’t until halfway back to camp that she realizes she still has the radio.

 

“You have to kill him.”

They’re gathered around the war table, and Clarke is spliced in the fragmented colors of glowing maps. A battle plan runs down her jaw like a tattoo. The X that marks the village saved by Lexa’s barricade hovers over her cheekbone.

“I don’t have to do anything.”

It’s been back and forth for an hour. Arkadia has taken up the mantle of blood must have blood as if it wasn’t protesting it just a few short days ago. The irony tastes like ash in her mouth.

“Let us give him a trial,” Pike says earnestly, “here in Arkadia. A proper one.”

“We both know what will happen the second he steps through that gate,” Clarke dismisses. “He’ll be dead before you prove him guilty.”

“People aren’t that irrational.”

“Their grief made you Chancellor. It’s more than enough.”

Bellamy hasn’t stopped pacing. He makes dark black streaks on the metal and his gun thumps against his belt buckle. Clarke has bruised, a shackle of red and blue around her wrist, and she didn’t miss the flash in Lexa’s eyes when he let go. “Why won’t you do it?”

 _Because you want me to_ , she nearly snaps, but bites her tongue. “I’m trying to end this cycle of bloodshed. Killing him is hardly a way to lead by example.”

“You’re called the Commander of Death, Clarke. I don’t think they expect you to be merciful.”

“And yet Lexa hasn’t razed Arkadia for the actions of a few. Why do I get an exemption?”

“He’s one man, not a whole village.”

When Emerson had screamed, she had heard hundreds of voices in his throat. “He isn’t. Not to me.”

“This isn’t about you, Clarke. This is about getting justice for our dead.”

Clarke grinds her teeth until she hears her jaw pop. “You didn’t say the same thing when you tried to blame me for why you can’t sleep at night.”

Pike puts his hands down a little more forcefully than needed. Bellamy looks torn between guilt and indignation, like he doesn’t know which one would hurt less, and storms out of the room without a word. Clarke exhales, slowly, and exhaustion rimmed around her eyes seeps into her bones. The Chancellor ducks his head to meet her eyes. For once, he doesn’t look like the enemy.

“Don’t take what he says seriously,” Pike says, “he’s struggling.”

“Yeah, well,” the bitterness in her words stays on her tongue, “he’s not the only one.”

For a second they’re teacher and student. Pike looks like she can’t solve a problem with an obvious answer. Clarke’s too tired to try a different angle.

“This isn’t about what you’ve done, Clarke.”

He’s studying the map, a large red circle inked around the camp where the Grounders lie in wait. They disappear into the trees, spears sharp by their sides, and Clarke feels like they’re fresh on the ground waiting for death to come from above. He hasn’t tested their boundaries yet, the invisible barrier that spells death for her people, but it’s only a matter of time until another grave will join the others.

“Isn’t it?”

“People tell me what you did in the Mountain. How you did it.”

“Everyone seems to have a different story.”

Returning from Polis, they had passed through a village who welcomed Clarke like she was the new vessel for Heda’s spirit. _Wanheda_ was a prayer on their tongue rather than a curse, children clamoring to catch a glimpse of the Mountain-Slayer, and she couldn’t help but wonder how many generations had to pass until her legend turns into myth and disappears entirely. It if ever does at all.

Her legacy has been carved out in death and flame, but it is her own. Maybe one day she will accept it like Lexa has accepted hers, the tradition of Heda passed down in scars and black blood, but for now she will lean as much as she dares on the Commander’s unwavering presence that is free of judgment or resentment. Two months ago she would rather have died, but as time wears away at some edges and sharpens others, it becomes harder to remember why she should hate Lexa as much as she hates herself.

Sometimes all she can think about is Lexa on her knees, her hand on her own and how she wanted it to stay. Clarke doesn’t even know if forgiveness is a word she believes in anymore.

(But she’s starting to believe in something.)

“It was a leader’s choice. You did what you had to do.”

“Is that what you did? What you had to do?”

Pike doesn’t waver as he looks at her. He’s greyer than she remembers. Older. “Yes.”

 _You’re not so different_ , whispers a voice in her head. Bile splashes the back of her mouth. “Then what would you do?”

“He’s the reason forty-nine of our people died. Banishment isn’t a mercy he deserves.”

But living a life with nothing left isn’t anything close to mercy; Emerson’s ghosts might have a different gait but wear the same faces as her own, and they will be the only thing left to keep him company for the rest of his days. She thinks about all he’s done, all he was willing to do, the blood that isn’t his own letting him breathe in the open sky.

She thinks about Lexa’s open expression, about _blood must not have blood_ , about Titus roaring his displeasure. Clarke leaves more conflicted than when she came.

 

Night has almost fallen when Jasper finds her.

He storms up, a dark and heavy thunder brewing about his eyes, and Raven makes to ward him back. Clarke stops her with a hand on her wrist.

“It’s fine,” she murmurs, even as his gait turns clumsy for a moment. “I had to talk to him eventually.”

Raven’s told her about his new habits, how he’d taken to making his own moonshine when Monty refused to give him any more. He doesn’t need to be close for the stench of alcohol to waft towards them. Clarke takes the last gulp of her own drink and grimaces as it goes down rough.

“Are you sure? All he does recently is fuck people over.”

Monty told them about the ashes. Raven is terrifying when her anger is quiet instead of loud, worn over her shoulders and in her eyes. It didn’t last long, not when her tongue is usually so sharp and silver, but for a little while she was the girl who pulled nine different weapons out of her jacket on their way to make peace.

Clarke just felt tired. “It’s been months in the making.”

Raven’s jaw works for a moment before she nods, stiffly swivelling out of her seat. Clarke makes a note not to mention how she uses the table to help her stand, and in return nothing is said about how Clarke’s breath trembles, just for a second. Raven’s arms loop gentle around her shoulders and not her neck. “Don’t torture yourself for him,” she murmurs into her hair, “he’s still grieving. He won’t hear you.”

 _Just like I didn’t,_ Raven almost says, but then she’s gone.

The second she leaves, Jasper takes up her spot. His hands go automatically to Raven’s cup and swallow the last half-mouthful left. He doesn’t flinch.

“Welcome home, _Wanheda_.”

He even sounds different. Darker, slower, and the slur in his syllables is a constant presence. Clarke refuses to look away. “This isn’t home,” she says, “it hasn’t been for a long time.”

“Yeah.” His eyes float up to the Ark, a ruined relic that looks more like a prison. “I know what you mean.”

His home lies in the bones of the Mountain. Charred, black, the stink of death not quite imagined pressed forever into his skin.

“What do you want, Jasper?”

He bares his teeth in the imitation of a smile. “Just visiting an old friend.”

“That’s what you told Monty when you stole Finn’s ashes.”

“I guess friend really isn’t the right word. All my friends are dead, and yet, here you are.” He looks at her closely, running his eyes up and down, smearing his own ghosts over her wounds. “The title they gave you is really ironic.”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

“Maybe that’s even worse.”

They sit in silence for a little while, Jasper turning the cup around and around until his fingers cramp. Clarke stares ahead and feels the ground underneath her feet, but it’s been so hard to breathe since Emerson came back. She wishes all at once for Lexa and her companionable quiet that stopped hurting while she wasn’t paying attention.

She’s about to ask him what he wants when he sets the cup down. The boy that he used to be still exists in the hunch of his back and twist of his wrists, and it’s those wrists that strain with tendons when he curls his fingers into fists. “Do you regret it?”

“I did what I had to do.”

“Don’t give me that _bullshit_!” His fist crashes down on the table. Clarke can hear the groan of his joints against the metal. “I don’t give a shit whether it was what you _had to do_. I don’t want your fucking excuses, Clarke!”

She rises, her glare caught with his. “What, I should have let you die? All of you? Let them… let them harvest you like animals?”

“You’re calling _them_ animals? After what you did?”

Her fingers itch to grab his collar and pull. She knows that if she put the knife to his throat he would offer no apologies, no forgiveness, nothing like the soft regret that has only just started to fade from Lexa’s gaze. He would laugh into the metal as if it proved his point and press his pounding pulse against it. _What’s one more_ , she hears him say to her, _what’s more blood? Wear it like war paint, Wanheda. You deserve that much._

So instead she breathes long and slow and sits back down. It only seems to aggravate him.

“You didn’t see the cages,” she says, “or how they hung them up on hooks and bled them. You didn’t see the suffering.”

Jasper sneers. “You’ve caused enough of your own.”

“The dead don’t suffer, Jasper.”

“Maybe not, but I do.” His fingers press into the sides of the table. “Every time I close my eyes, I can see Maya’s face and her skin, a-and how it bubbled and leaked into my hands. It slid off like fucking _plastic_ , like some stupid burnt toy…”

Clarke closes her eyes and she’s back underground. She steps over the bodies of children curled into their parents, the bloody imprint of their faces fused into their shirts. A puddle of what used to be blood wells under her foot. She’s been here every night since; she’ll never really leave.

But Jasper doesn’t sleep anymore. His fever dreams are a relief, a temporary blackness against a memory that has become more than that. Sometimes Clarke can forget the lever under her hand, but he can never shake Maya’s weight in his arms.

He stares off at the great fires in the distance. The knot in his jaw works like it is locked by a key. “You killed them because she abandoned you. Us. And now you’re on her side.”

Anger bites at her fingertips. “I came back to protect my people. I’m the only reason all of you aren’t _dead_.”

“You left your _people_ when they needed you.” His grin is all teeth. “Just another habit you picked up from the Grounder queen, huh?”

“Is that what this is about? Lexa?”

“This is about a whole lot of fucking things, Clarke, but I just have to know.” He leans forward, his eyes dark and deep and hollow. “How does it feel to be leashed to the person who turned you into a monster?”

A crack rings out. Clarke’s palm throbs in answer to the red blooming on Jasper’s cheek. She doesn’t even remember standing up again.

“You don’t get to judge my decisions,” she breathes, a stilted anger on her exhale, “not when you can’t understand why I make them. I carry the weight of my own choices and that’s all you need to know.”

His face slowly turns back to her. He looks like a corpse, his cheekbones cut from glass made out of the ashes of the Mountain. “You’re right, I don’t understand. I thought I did, but this—“ he gestures to the Grounders sprawled out on the field, vanished into the trees like smoke, “—you should _want_ to kill her! For what she made you do!”

His voice is small, raw, and that wounded part of herself understands. “Why… why don’t you hate her?”

“I…” she sits slowly, wearily, Maya clinging onto her back, “used to. I hated her so much. It’s what kept me going.”

Clarke remembers the forest, the knotted ball of hatred and betrayal and anguish that left her too angry to die. Without it, they would have found her body after the snows thawed.

She licks her suddenly dry lips. She remembers coming to Polis, not leaving her room, dragging the furs from her bed because they smelled like Lexa. She remembers silent meals, spurned gifts, endless patience. She remembers the knife against Lexa’s throat and the utter lack of fear. Just a deep, sad understanding, and the slight tilt of her chin under the blade.

 _Take if it will give you peace,_ her eyes said, _but I know that it will not_.

Clarke saw it again as the Ice Queen died where she sat, an old wound that had never closed and never would even as justice came and went.

“But I… she…” Clarke inhales and she hates how it shakes, “she did what she had to do. Just like me.”

Jasper nods like he was expecting it. Maybe he was. “You never answered my question.”

“What?”

“Do you regret it?”

She used to. She would reach inside herself and pull everything out if it meant that she could go back. But she has stood next to a girl who walked over the corpses of her people, still warm, and pulled their souls into her lungs to keep her upright. A girl who does not cry vengeance, who does not demand blood, who does not let that burden break her. A girl that lets her believe that this mantle of a leader, so heavy and dark, does not have to be a death sentence.

Perhaps one day when they have given all that they can, they can pick up the pieces together.

Jasper must see it. He stands up like all the fight has left his body and all that remains are his hollow bones.

“Maybe you should kill Emerson,” Jasper spits blood into the dirt, “finish what you started. It’s not genocide if there’s someone still alive, right?”

Clarke looks to the flame like it has an answer, but she knows her decision long before it flickers out.

 

Lexa sits on her throne like it was made for her alone. The beam of moonlight cuts a burning streak across her eyes and down, spilling over her sash. It shifts and pools and goes red like flowing blood.

Her war paint is the abyss given claws and it rakes three uneven gouges across her cheeks just like the first time they met. It’s almost the same and yet so different; everyone is just as scared, just as angry, but the slight twist of Lexa’s lips is different and welcomed and feels like a secret passed between them. The tent is hot and sticky and smells like fear, like mistrust, but Skaikru weapons sit next to Grounder spears and if someone dies today it will be Clarke’s hand alone that passes judgement.

“Today we are gathered here, as we have been countless times before, to witness fate play its course.”

Emerson snarls against the stake he’s been lashed to. His neck weeps red where the collar has cut into him, but like a rabid dog he strains himself to the point of pain. Clarke keeps her eyes on Lexa.

“This man has been charged with the forty-nine deaths of _Skaikru_ at the Mountain. _Wanheda_ , he was gifted to you, and thus his life is in your hands.”

Ryder takes Lexa’s knife and hands it respectfully to Clarke. It glints, solid and heavy, its edge licking sharp at her fingertips. Lexa sits back in her throne. “What is his punishment?”

Clarke steps so close she can see the blood vessels burst in Emerson’s eyes. His skin chaps, cracked like fissures, like Maya’s cheeks before they slid off her face. She’s seen his grin before in the skeletons of the three hundred burned at the dropship, frozen for a split-second eternity, faded only when she stepped on their bones and crumbled them to dust. She breathes out a prayer to the fallen like it will soften the fact it was her word that condemned them to the ground.

“Come on, _Wanheda_ ,” Emerson sneers – he lifts his chin to expose his pulse pounding against his throat, “you’ve kept me waiting long enough. Finish what you started.”

It would be easy. Another ghost born, another face to take up the mantle in her dreams. But nothing about the ground is easy, or right, or just; Clarke has no delusions, no illusions of greatness, just a weariness and too much blood on her hands to ever wash away. Everything she touches will be stained with red and regret and reminders of what she has done.

But she is the Commander of Death, not its servant. Perhaps one day she will walk with her demons instead of carrying them, and this blood-tinged peace they have built up on the bones of their beloved will be strong enough to stand on its own. But for now it wobbles, a newborn colt not yet on its legs, and she will place these red hands against Lexa’s to keep it aloft.

Heda lets go of her dead in order to serve the living. Maybe Wanheda needs only to make peace with them.

“I don’t know if killing you would give me peace,” Clarke murmurs, her voice a gunshot in the quiet, “but I know that I don’t deserve it. Not yet.”

The knife severs the rope binding his hands to the spike. He reaches, but Clarke simply steps back.

“You are more than a man,” she says over the rising discord in the room, “you are a memory. A reminder. I wouldn’t be killing you for what you’ve done, but for what I’ve done instead.” She turns to Lexa whose face is earnest and open and so hopeful it hurts. “I give this man his life. _Jus nou drein jus daun._ ”

Though she aches for it, Wanheda will not kill the thing that birthed her. There are worse things to suffer.

Bellamy is shouting and Pike is spitting orders and above this cacophony Emerson is _screaming_ , forever alone with his ghosts, but Lexa rises and her voice is deafening and strong. She speaks of peace, of overcoming the shadow of death the Mountain once cast on their children, of taking satisfaction from knowing that the man that represents generations of anguish will now bear the sins of his people. The Ambassadors whisper and shuffle but they _listen_ and it’s more than Clarke would ever expect of them. She only realizes that _may you live forever_ slips past her lips when they murmur with something that could pass for respect.

“How could you do this?” Bellamy snarls and Clarke’s wrist _throbs_ at the sound of his voice but she doesn’t back down.

“I begged Lexa to spare our people. _Blood must not have blood_ doesn’t only apply to her.”

He stalks out of the tent, Pike and the other Arkers following, but Clarke looks at Lexa and her eyes are black and green and filled with moonlight, with pride, with that unreadable emotion she’s long given up understanding.

Except it isn’t unreadable, not anymore, and Clarke recognizes it the same time Lexa hides it away but it doesn’t _matter_ because she’s seen it and it fills the part of her that’s been hollow since the Mountain. 

Later, when Wanheda kneels before Heda, the Ambassador paying tribute to her Commander, she slips the radio into Lexa’s open palm and smiles all the way home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is un-beta'd, but I figure we need this after the mess of last night. I'm sorry for everything the show has done to us, but we can do our best to make something beautiful out of the rubble. Ste yuj, kru.

_It is bright and hot and Lukas must squint his eyes to see the incoming staff. It meets his own with a solid clunk, the wood bending after years and years of rigorous training – there are grooves where his fingers fit and he remembers using this same staff many years ago against his own Heda. He swears the weapon is lighter than it used to be._

_His opponent moves too quickly, striking him in the knee. His old joints protest and he buckles to just one leg. Still, he uses his falling momentum to swing, the end of his staff connecting solidly with a narrow shoulder. There is a grunt of pain, the shuffle of small feet, and Lukas buys himself enough time to stand up again._

_“Good, Minos,” he praises, shaking braids out of his face. The girl opposite him beams despite the awkward way she holds her smarting shoulder. “You have gotten much faster. These bones have trouble keeping up.”_

_“Please, Heda,” she almost scoffs, “I know you could kill any one of us if you tried.”_

_“Perhaps.” A new flurry of attacks, Lukas now on the offensive, and Minos clenches her jaw as her staff becomes a whirling blur in her hands. “But that is not the point of the exercise, is it?”_

_He hooks the end of his weapon between her hands and yanks, forcibly removing one tiny fist from its place. Without the anchor, a quick sweep downwards has her staff flying into the dust. Minos huffs but it’s tempered by a smile as she wipes the glistening sweat from her brow. She is the newest addition to the Natblidas, no more than eight summers, but he already sees a peculiar wisdom in her eyes that will serve her well in the years to come._

_“I believe that is enough for today,” Lukas smiles, pushing his snowy hair back from his face. “Let us find the others.”_

_Most of the Natblidas put down their weapons at his expectant look, eager to escape the blistering summer sun, but two circle each other in the dust. Shar has shed his tunic long ago and sweat rolls down the dip of his spine, smeared with earth and blood, as he lunges. He nearly pummels a younger boy into the ground and ignores the lick of a practice sword against his bare flesh. It does not cut him, and he does not care._

_It is only when he has the younger boy in a headlock that Lukas steps forward, his fingers digging into the tender places of Shar’s elbow that almost instantly releases his grip. The other gasps in the dirt, a watery glare shot upwards, but Lukas steps gingerly on his practice sword as he goes to pick it up._

_“What is our way, Xander?”_

_The smaller boy, marred by black and purple bruises from Shar’s unrelenting fists, looks away._

_“Jus nou drein jus daun.”_

_“Good.” Lukas steps away, past Shar who grins both vicious and victorious. “We search for justice, not vengeance.”_

_In a flash, he slams his palm upwards. Shar’s head snaps up, a spray of black blood arcing from his mouth, and his Heda sweeps his own feet out from under him. He lands in the dust with a wheeze. “But sometimes, justice is no less sweet.”_

_The giggling Natblidas follow him under the shade of a great oak. Lukas settles in its roots as it frames him and the others clamber all around, eyes wide and hopeful, touching the many carvings that ring the thick bark with reverence._

_“This tree was planted by the Ogunzaun-Lida,” he says, and a low whisper rolls through the assembled children. “It has grown tall and strong and unwavering, just like her.”_

_“Tell us about her and Wanheda,” Minos pleads, “tell us about their bond.”_

_Shar scoffs. “Love is weakness. Tell us about how Heda Leksa brought down their Chancellor.”_

_“Was Heda Leksa weak, Shar? The one who brought the Kongeda together? The one who spoke with spirits? The last true Heda?”_

_“N-no, of course not—“_

_“Then love is not weakness, Shar. Love is strength. Love is how she and Wanheda brought their people together and ended the fighting. It is how they remain.”_

_He smiles then, gazing back at his students. “I tell you about Skaikru, about Wanheda, but it is all connected. There would not be a story to tell without the one between Klark kom Skaikru and Heda Leksa. And now, our story begins with a whisper.”_

 

“Lexa?”

The radio hums in her fist. Clarke adjusts the antenna and winces at a burst of static that fills the small space. It is dark now, a few nights since Emerson was banished from the Commander’s lands. He hadn’t stopped screaming until she cut out his tongue.

There’s a garbled hiss of white noise from the speaker. Clarke can’t help the way her lips curl up at the edges. “You have to press the button on the side to talk, remember?”

The interference vanishes and leaves her room silent. There’s a breath from the other side. “I knew that.”

“Sure you did.”

At least Lexa remembered to release the trigger this time.

“I will not sit here and listen to a black box insult me,” Lexa grumbles, “even if it does use your voice.”

“What, the Commander of the Thirteen Clans can spear someone in the heart from forty feet away, but can’t take a little ribbing?”

Even without the button pressed, Clarke can hear Lexa’s exasperated exhale in her head.

“I do not know what ‘ribbing’ means, Clarke, but I don’t believe I enjoy it.”

“You aren’t supposed to.”

There’s a moment of pause. The Ark groans as it settles and Clarke wonders, not for the first time, if it will one day collapse under its own weight. Space was kinder to the structure than the people it housed, but now gravity drags its bones into the dirt and the Skaikru live in a corpse that cries whenever night falls because it will never again taste the stars. It’s almost tragic, in a way, if Clarke could remember how this metal monster used to feel like home.

Lexa clears her throat. There have been more moments like this, silence that’s both comfortable and not, and Clarke drives herself insane in the spaces between their breathing. She never knew how much she could read from the curl of Lexa’s fingers and how she inclines her head until all that she had left was her voice, the odd formality a contrast with the click when Lexa says her name and how it never fails to set her skin alight.

She knows what she saw in that tent, _knows_ it down to her blackened bones, but without Lexa looking at her soft and gentle it feels less like flying and more like falling, and over these months Clarke’s developed a fear of heights. There’s too much history to take the fall, too much blood, but sometimes it’s like there’s a rope wrapped around her heart and it tugs her along anyway. Some nights it’s easy to forget its pull, to forget that she’s anything other than another Ambassador, but in others Lexa’s voice comes in low over the radio and Clarke has to bite her tongue to stop from swallowing it.

Her mind has become a maze of distractions and dead-ends in order to forget, to put Lexa inside one of many boxes in her head and ignore the fact that nearly everything she thinks about is stained black with warpaint.

It’s exhausting, but then, so is carrying around a genocide in her back pocket. She will learn as she must, as she always has. Her people come first.

(These days, though, when Lexa says _our people_ and means it, her eyes bright and blazing with promise, Clarke can’t help but peer over the edge of that cliff and wonder what lies at the bottom.)

“How goes the negotiations?”

Clarke pushes all thoughts of _someday_ back into its proper box and groans.

“Awful. It’s like he doesn’t listen to anyone but himself and his advisors.”

“That is normal for one threatened. Admitting he is wrong is admitting weakness.”

“I don’t think my people and your people view weakness in the same way.”

“All people are animals in the end, Clarke. The scent of blood is the same to you or I.”

Half of Arkadia is bleeding out of the gaping wounds the ground has left in their heads. It’s a miracle any of them have been left walking at all.

“I suppose you’re right.” Clarke burrows her head into the scratchy linens of her bed. With the consistent hum of machinery around her at all manners of the night, sleep comes fleetingly or not at all. The blankets are too rough, the bed too hard, and the drone of the lights outside her door invade her dreams. She supposes it’s a luxury to be able to dream of something other than the Mountain but for once she wants to close her eyes and see nothing at all.

“Are…” Lexa sucks air through her teeth, deliberates, “are you well, Clarke?”

“I’m fine.”

Silence. She can picture Lexa staring at the radio, turning it over in her hands, catching the threads of her gloves on the edges. They could leave it there, they should, but Clarke presses the button before her head can catch up with her mouth. “Why?”

A bloom of static isn’t immediately followed by Lexa’s voice. While the Commander is always cautious around her, always gentle, she is rarely hesitant. Not since before the Mountain, since—no.

“You… sound tired. More than usual.”

Lexa had often been awake when Clarke had in Polis, hunched over her war table and aimlessly shifting pawns across the map. It was strange, seeing her in nothing more than a soft shirt and shorts, bare-foot and slender with her armor draped carelessly over a chair. There was a moment when their eyes met and Lexa’s face was wide open, soft and lax and entirely unguarded, but the candles flickered with a new breeze and cast sharper shadows to hide her.

_“You cannot sleep?”_

_Clarke crosses the war room and presses one hip against the balcony. It had been mere hours since the Mountain was destroyed, less than that since Lexa had nearly prostrated herself with such a quiet reverence that her words burned Clarke’s tongue with how sacred they tasted._

_She can’t stand the way Lexa looks at her sometimes, how her name sounds more like a prayer. It makes the hatred she’s kept for so long hard to hold._

_“No. Not… not since…”_

_Lexa dips her head in acknowledgment. Her fingertips are stained black; she’s streaked the Mountain with soot. “You are free to wander as you please. The night air can be refreshing.”_

_She gently places a wooden coin on the top of the structure, painted black. The blue figures of the Sky Crew are cleared from the area._

_“What about you?”_

_Lexa hums, never taking her eyes from the miniature trees. “What about me?”_

_“Do you sleep?”_

_She shuffles a few pieces from a river that Clarke has never seen, pushing them back over the lonely bridge that connects the two bodies of land. “Sometimes.”_

_“Is it…” Clarke swallows as Lexa glances up, her eyes as wide and unreadable as ever, “does it ever get any easier?”_

_“It never gets easier, Clarke. You just get stronger.”_

_“What if I can’t?”_

_“The wilderness did not take you,” she says gently, “and neither will this. You are already much stronger than you believe.”_

_Clarke takes a few steps into the relative warmth of the war room. Lexa’s shadow sends the miniature version of Arkadia into an artificial eclipse, and across the table, their darkness intertwines. “And I suppose you were always strong to begin with.”_

_Lexa’s jaw raises just a touch. “I had no choice. A Commander is never weak.”_

_Not for the first time, Clarke wonders what kind of person Lexa would have been had she not been called to lead far too young. Without thousands of ghosts in her throat, would Clarke still be able to understand her? Without the memory of dark curls clutched in one trembling fist, would Lexa’s hands be able to do more than hurt? Would they still come together the way they always do, a mountain and a meteor, destined to collide?_

_It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. These things have happened. Lexa made her choice._

_(Then why does it feel like there’s still another one to make?)_

_Clarke reaches out to smudge the soot layered on the Mountain. The coin at its peak wobbles. “What’s this for?” she asks, picking it up between thumb and forefinger, running her nail against the wood. There’s carvings there that she can’t see or make sense of._

_“It is a token,” Lexa responds, “a sign of gratitude to the spirits.”_

_“Spirits?”_

_“Yes.” She rounds the table so she’s standing next to Clarke, her loose hair smelling like smoke and beeswax and so uniquely of the_ ground _. “They watch over the people and in return we honour their memory.”_

_“Do they have names?”_

_“Some do. Many spirits are simply the ancestors who become guardians until the cycle returns them to the earth. But there are few who are strong and remain for longer.”_

_Lexa gently takes the coin from Clarke, flipping it over to expose a stylized gust of wind. “Death is one. Life is another.”_

_She places it back on the board with a murmured something in Trigedasleng. Death conquers the Mountain. “Death and Life aren’t very creative names.”_

_A smile tugs at one side of Lexa’s mouth. “Wamplei and Sonraun are not their true names, only what they are. Much like we are human, but I am Lexa and you are Clarke.”_

_“Then what are they?”_

_“We do not know.” Lexa abandons her table and walks to the balcony. Clarke definitely doesn’t notice the way her hamstrings flex with each step._

_“I thought you said you did?”_

_“We did, once. They even appeared to us in times of hardship. But they have been absent for many years now. The shamans believe that they have been pulled back into the cycle.”_

_“And that’s… bad, right?”_

_“Without Life and Death walking the ground, there is no balance. No peace. Too much of one and not enough of the other.”_

_“Do you believe that?”_

_Lexa turns as Clarke comes up behind, eyebrows raised ever so slightly. “Do you?”_

_From here, Clarke can see the broad stroke of stars above her head and how it seems to leak light, a sword run across the belly of the sky to split it open. Though part of her knows they’re nothing more than explosions, single pinpricks of light in an otherwise vast and yawning void, it’s easy to see what Lexa does as the horizon bends like pressed down by two heavy hands._

_“I don’t know what I believe,” Clarke says honestly. “A year ago, I would have said no. You were born, and then you lived, and then you died. Balance was ejecting your body out into space while your grand-daughter gave birth.”_

_“But now?”_

_Clarke eyes her. Lexa has cut her open and bled her of almost all the stardust that used to run through her veins, the knife in her back leaving a trail of comets as she limped out into the wilderness. And yet, Lexa is here now, her hands firm over that very wound she created. She comes from the earth itself and her fingers weave roots that hold Clarke’s broken spine together; Lexa pumps mud through her vessels and breathes morning mist into her lungs to clean away the grime of re-entry. She won’t ever leave the sky behind, she keeps its memory in her laugh and her eyes, but she met the earth and it rose to greet her in a way that felt suspiciously like coming home._

_“Now, I think… I think I could start to believe there’s more to life than that.”_

_The supernova in Lexa’s stare, bright and bold and consuming, tells her that she’s not the only one trading pieces of herself for something new entirely._

_“I will retire now, Clarke,” Lexa says, and no one mentions how her voice wavers just a touch. “Feel free to stay up as long as you like. I know the ghosts are louder on some days than others.”_

_And as she leaves, gathering up her twin swords and almost dashing from the room, Clarke wonders if the ghost that taught her to wield those blades would ever quiet at all._

Clarke blinks out of her memory like one would rouse from dream. Lexa’s voice crackles worriedly on the other line. “I don’t sleep well,” she offers lamely, “it’s too… it’s not right.”

“Is it the Ark? I cannot imagine sleeping well surrounded by metal.”

It’s true that she’s been spoiled, wrapped up in the finest furs in Polis, often stolen from Lexa’s own bed while she was in meetings. Lexa never once mentioned it other than a faint curl of her lips when she roused Clarke one afternoon, tangled in the pelt and half slumped on her cushioned chair. Day napping was easier. Fewer nightmares.

But it wasn’t the fur itself that helped Clarke rest. It was the scent it carried, the same that Lexa’s thick hair always trapped. Something familiar in a sea of uncertainty.

“It’s not that.” Clarke nibbles on her lower lip, twisting herself further into her scratchy sheets. She had gotten used to sleeping upright, splayed the best she could in Skaikru’s chair at the war table, the scratch of Lexa’s wooden pieces a comforting drone. “I just… I sleep better when you’re around.”

The Ark creaks. Clarke buries her face into her pillow like she could just will the words back into her mouth. Lexa’s breathing catches for a second and Clarke swears she’s going to—

“As do I.”

Away from Lexa’s prying eyes, Clarke lets a smile spread across her face unbidden. She can almost _see_ Lexa’s flush, the way her eyes drift out to one side and her hands folding at the wrists. Lexa goes to say something else, but a commotion on her end has it cut short.

“Clarke,” she says, and there’s little of that staggering fondness of a few seconds ago, “something has happened, I must go. I will speak with you later.”

“Okay. Be safe.”

“You as well.” A slight pause. “Please try and get some rest.”

Clarke stuffs the radio under her bed and flips onto her back. It takes three seconds for her to realize there’s no way she’s going to sleep now, not with Lexa’s voice in her head and restlessness itching at her fingertips. She dresses herself in silence and slips out the door, her cloak billowing as she goes.

The courtyard is quiet. Most have gone to sleep, wrapped in thin blankets in an effort to beat away the chill of the evening. Clarke had read many books in space about winter, how the snows and ice were supposed to last for an age and steep the entire world in a ghostly stillness, but it is late February and the sun beats down upon the thawed land. It had only snowed twice while she wandered the wilderness and woke to frost sealing her lashes together.

Lexa says it is the spirits being anxious, Winter yielding to Spring too soon because Death has already taken much from the land. Clarke wonders instead if the bombs did more than corrupt the people.

Two people stand quietly conversing by the well. Months of sneaking up on wary prey make Clarke’s steps light as she slinks into the shadow of a nearby hut. Jaha is always easy to spot; he holds himself differently than he used to, more relaxed yet more upright at once, and his smile is calm and wide as he murmurs to his companion. Jackson is a little harder, but the floodlight sinks into his hair and plays across his face and Clarke frowns as a slither of unease coils around her spine.

Jaha turns something over and over in his fingers, head bobbing as if having a silent conversation. His smile cracks, fractures, falling for a split second before returning into place, his head pulling a slow half-rotation to land exactly where Clarke lurks in the darkness. That feeling she can’t shake sinks lower still to pool cold in her belly.

“Out for a walk, Clarke?”

Jackson murmurs his farewell and Jaha barely seems to register him. They are alone in short order, Clarke lingering back, reluctant to leave whatever shred of advantage she thinks the dark of night brings.

“It’s a nice night,” she shrugs. It is. Steam billows from her mouth when she exhales, but her cloak keeps her warm. It still smells like candles.

She emerges from the side of the hut, the floodlight blinding for a split second. Her vision settles with a momentary swath of red in the corner of her eye. It’s gone before she even needs to blink.  

“How have you been?”

“Surviving.” Clarke crosses her arms over her chest. His smile widens a fraction. “Just like everyone else.”

“Are you glad to be home?”

The heavy footsteps of the guards clang on the wall. Everything here smells wrong, sterile, and the angles are too sharp to be natural. Too hard.

“This isn’t home anymore, really. I don’t think I have one.”

He nods, like he understands. Maybe he does. He’s been roaming for longer than her.

“Would you like one?”

A flash of blue between his fingers. Clarke tries not to touch the chip nestled carefully in the folds of her cloak, Lexa’s tattoo stamped on the front like a sort of corporate logo. She has so many questions weighing on the tip of her tongue, so many answers she doesn’t want to hear, but there’s a calmness in his gaze that seems too still to be natural, to be right.

She takes a breath and reminds herself that not everyone is trying to kill her these days.

“I thought my mom took those from you,” Clarke says instead, “something about dangerous science.”

“Abby is just worried,” he dismisses, waving one hand. “You know how she is. Always convinced that things have to be perfect and understandable before being put into motion.”

“You keep telling Raven it’s pretty close to perfect.”

Jaha peers at her curiously for a moment before a smile sneaks across his face. “So that’s what this is about.”

“This is about you harassing my friend when she’s in _real_ pain. Don’t you think Raven has enough to deal with without your bullshit religion?”

“All I’ve told her is that the City of Light could ease her burdens. Her pain.”

“Is that what it did for you? Was Wells just a _burden?_ ”

Clarke from months ago would be ashamed with how easily the barb slips in. She has long since learned that words are more fluid than knives, that they can seep into the cracks of armor otherwise impenetrable. Lexa’s recoil when Clarke had sworn to kill her, frothing and screaming and _mad_ with hatred had shown her that much.

Jaha’s face flickers for a moment before settling into the pain of an old wound. Clarke swallows against the feeling that has now turned sour with dread – despite all that has happened, what she has turned into and what she has done, she _knows_ Thelonius. Maybe she doesn’t know this man standing in front of her, but she knows what he used to be. What he would do for his son.

This stranger who hesitates before hurting for the most beloved thing in his life, like he’s _forgotten_ , isn’t him. It looks and acts and talks like him, but Clarke sees the way his eyes keep sliding off to the distance and how he has to struggle to keep the look of grief on his brow. It makes the sense she developed in the wilderness tingle, like teeth on the back of her neck, and she wraps her hands in her cloak to stop them from clenching.

“Of course not,” he says, and the indecision is gone from his face, “but it helped me cope with my grief. Raven has lost much more than most of us.”

“You think reminding her of how much pain she’s in all the time is helping? She needs to deal with it in her own way, not with some weird chip that makes you forget how much you’re hurting. That’s not how you heal.”

“You should learn to take your own advice, Clarke.”

She masks her flinch with a frown. “This isn’t about me.”

“Oh?” his eyebrow raises – he saw it anyway, “I think it might be.”

“I don’t need to forget, _Chancellor_ ,” Clarke nearly spits. “I don’t want to. That would cheapen all the things I had to do.”

“It’s a heavy burden for someone alone, Clarke.” He takes a step forward, and her bones vibrate with how much she wants to shuffle back. He’s not like Pike but something more quiet, more subtle, and there’s something in her that knows backing away is losing more than just ground. “You’re too young for something so big. I’m just offering you a way to share the weight.”

“I thought you, out of all people, would have understood that some things have to be carried alone.” Clarke’s nails bite into the fabric of her cloak, soft and heavy in her hands. “I might be young, but I’m not a kid anymore. You took that away the second you killed my father. The ground just made me realize it.”

_And I’m not alone,_ Clarke thinks, the ghost of Lexa’s hand on hers making it itch, _not anymore._

The tense, thick silence is broken by the shriek of a radio from the guard tower. There’s yelling, jostling, guns rising high and floodlights swivelling out into the darkness.

_“Rider approaching the south gate!”_

Clarke clambers up one of the short platforms before Jaha has a chance to form a rebuttal. She waves off a guard with a quick _bite me_ , peering into the field the best she can. The floodlights are _blinding_ , washing out the grass until it’s white and grey and green, and the horse caught in the beams snorts nervously. Its rider is slumped, head lolling forward, tethered to the beast by a thick wrap of rope around his middle. Even from here, Clarke can see the blood.

“He’s injured,” she shouts, “open the gates!”

“He’s a Grounder!” A guard sneers, and the red dot of his crosshair trains just left of the rider’s forehead. “I should blow out his fucking skull.”

“If he’s a Grounder, why the hell would he be here? He knows he’ll be killed!”

“They aren’t real smart,” he responds, placing his finger on the trigger, “especially not that Commander of theirs.”

Clarke bites her tongue until she tastes blood. The horse shies away, dancing back a few steps, and the rider slumps sideways. His cloak shifts away from his body.

“Hey,” another guard says, “he’s wearing our clothing.”

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Clarke mutters under her breath, not even bothering to hesitate as she plants her foot on a solid portion of the wall and jumps off. It’s a decent drop down and pain shoots from her ankles to her hips, her toes curling in her boots, but she jogs her way to the horse who looks at her with wary eyes. Its rider slumps over further, face pressed into its wild mane, and red blood trickles down its heaving flanks.

“Come on,” she murmurs, reaching out her hand, “it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She grabs the reins the same time the gates squeal open, startling it, and Clarke nearly has her shoulder yanked out of her socket for her troubles. But the yelling quiets down at the very least and she manages to lead the nervous animal into camp, trying to remember exactly how Lexa makes that noise with her tongue to coax her own steed along.

Her mother is there when she gets inside, bleary-eyed and shivering, but something comes over her the second she sees the blood.

“Cut him down,” she says, and Clarke doesn’t have to think twice. The knife severs the rope and she would be crushed if not for a guard managing to catch the rider before he falls. He glares and mutters something that suspiciously sounds like _grounder pounder_ , but Clarke’s too busy with putting her hands on the deep wound she can see to even give him a look. Abby pulls his hood away and stifles a gasp.

Murphy.

His face is little more than a purple bruise, cut and broken and swollen, but she’d recognize that nose with those cheekbones anywhere, no matter how shifted and cracked they might be.

It’s all a blur from there, shouting orders and staunching his wounds and nearly dragging him into the medical bay. But as Clarke goes to follow her mother, she catches Jaha’s gaze, sliding from Murphy’s shattered face to her own.

“Stay away from Raven,” she says, but it comes out low and dangerous and final. Wanheda flexes her hands, dark and sticky with blood, and doesn’t need to voice the _or else_ he can hear carried in the cold plume of mist that leaves her mouth.

 

It’s early when she stumbles out of the medical bay, blood buried under her fingernails and painted on her jaw. Jackson was nowhere to be found and it was Clarke alongside her mother, her hands buried nearly to Murphy’s spine in an effort to keep his weeping flesh together. She counted the notches in his ribs and willed his heart to keep beating when it quivered in her fist. Half a year ago as she cupped Raven’s face in her hands, slack and pale in the Dropship, she could have hated him. Maybe some part of her did. But that part is one she tore out in the wilderness, dropped and left to rot in the snow, and the wound-riddled remainder is not strong enough to carry a spite that doesn’t feel sincere. It belonged to Clarke when she left in the fall, but Wanheda traded in her burdens for a different kind of hatred; deeper, darker, one that takes up roots in her belly and flowers in her throat. She has no room for a stranger’s anger.

“Clarke?”

The blood on her hands is still wet. She closes her eyes, the tang of metal thick in her throat, and she is so carefully closing the eyes of a girl whose skin slips off when she touches it—

“Clarke!”

Monty peers anxiously into her face as she focuses. His hair is a little shorter than she remembers but it’s still swept across his face the same, his eyes holding the warmth and worry they always do. After all the changes in Arkadia, this one thing delivers more comfort than it should.

“Hey,” he says softly, his hand ever so gentle on her shoulder, “you okay?”

She rubs at her eyebrow with the back of her hand and winces as it smears blood across her temple. “Yeah. Long surgery.”

They ran out of gloves a few weeks ago. Clarke wonders absently how many of the Skaikru have disease crawling in their blood from their months on the ground.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. I can sacrifice some of my moonshine. It’s strong enough to sterilize fertilizer.”

They don’t go towards Farm Station where she knows Monty’s been sleeping, at home with the carefully tested dirt and the cultivated seeds they could find before winter sunk its fangs inside, but into the depths that lead to Raven’s workstation. She delivered a healthy _fuck you_ to Abby and threw herself into new work that only she understands, one entire wall scrawled with plans and equations. Various half-finished projects litter every available surface and scatter scrap across the room. It stinks of grease and metal and fire.

It’s hot when they walk in, Raven’s face obscured by a welding mask inches away from a hissing blue flame. There’s a still in the back corner that belches steam out the side of the Ark from a hastily constructed vent. Clear liquid streams out of one side and into a massive bucket.

“Monty!” They hear when the flame cuts out. “Your still started spewing money, I think I caught most of it but I may have licked some up off the floor. It’s potent stuff.”

She swivels in her seat, flicking her visor up as she goes. “Oh, hey Prin—shit, what happened?”

Monty ushers her over to a vat of water and hands her a rag. Someone installed a drain in the floor and the water runs red as Clarke drags it over her hands, along her forearms, over her neck. It’s cold and tastes of metal when she gets some on her tongue, but that could also be the blood.

Raven’s by her in an instant, wrapping her grease-stained fingers around Clarke’s wrists. There’s a worry there she isn’t used to, one that she’s been seeing more and more, and not for the first time she wonders what exactly people see when they look at her. “Hey, talk to me.”

Clarke scrubs at the spot under her jaw that won’t go away until Raven takes the rag from her, cupping her face with one hand and wiping with the other. She lets out a hum of thanks and doesn’t fight when Raven exposes more of her throat. “Surgery. A broken artery sprays blood right into your face. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I heard someone rode in through the barricade in the middle of the night. Tall-n’-Tanned must be _pissed_.”

Clarke’s eyes open just a sliver to glare, but Raven’s hands have started to massage now and she can’t keep the expression long enough. “Please don’t call her that.”

“Why not? It’s like code. No one knows what we’re talking about.”

“She’s not even that tall.”

“Taller than both of us.”

“Like _that’s_ hard,” Monty says from the corner, and Raven chucks the bloody rag half-heartedly in his direction.

Clarke takes a long drink of the moonshine before dunking her hands. It burns like wildfire, a little close to acid, and it makes sense why the Grounders call it _fayawada._ Her skin feels like sandpaper but at least she’s clean.

The alcohol mixes uneasily with Clarke’s empty gut but she takes another drink anyway once Monty offers it. Its stench masks the blood that seems to be infused with her scent now, much like Lexa perpetually smells like fire. She carries it with her like an invisible cloak, something that is uniquely her own. Clarke wishes the universe chose anything else to mark her.

She blinks as the world fuzzes for a moment before righting itself. “I see why you keep this from Jasper.”

“One hundred and sixty proof,” Monty says proudly, patting the smaller cup in Clarke’s hands, “it’ll even put Raven on her ass pretty quick.”

Raven limps back to the workbench and sits herself on the seat, leaning back against the edge. “That was one time.”

“Yeah, and you were hungover for two days.”

She scoffs, waving her hand. “Not the point.”

Clarke eases herself onto a stool, content in the quiet ebb and flow of their argument. It’s been a long time since she’s talked about anything other than survival, or justice, or ghosts. Sometimes she forgets that life does have its moments of humour spliced between the tragedy when all it’s determined to give her are corpses.

Those bodies are scattered all around them, even now. Raven keeps Finn’s necklace even after what he’s done, Bellamy’s gun is broken apart on her bench for repairs, and an early knife similar to the one that left Wells dead in the dirt sits on a rack. All they have left is what they’ve left behind, and it makes Clarke cherish those that remain all the more. Her friends are scared and flawed and angry, but they are hers. She will protect them with her last breath and even after that, all to guard the way that Raven shoves at Monty with a grin on her face and he dances out of her reach. Clarke finds herself wondering if Lexa has anyone like that before she can catch it.

For what feels like the hundredth time, she chastises herself. She’s stuck in the tattoo that loops around the back of Lexa’s neck, over and over again; Lexa believes that everything begins again and Clarke is starting to believe her because inevitably, inexorably, Clarke’s head always comes back to the same place.

She can try to pretend that they’re just partners, allies, leaders who lean and support each other for a vision they can’t fulfil on their own. She can push down the memories of her smile, her stride, and her patience. But no matter what she does and how she tries, Clarke can never stop her traitorous thoughts from remembering flame and warpaint and fealty. There are words for this; quantum entanglement and gravitational pull, two people wrapped up so tightly in the fabric of space-time that the universe yanks them together without fail because it does not know how to function with them apart. There are hypotheses for this; string theory and the multiverse, one beginning yet so many different ends all made up of the same matter if only you look. Clarke only knows that if she peers close enough she can still see the start of the universe in Lexa’s eyes, hear its echo in her voice, and that somehow she has tasted this eternity before.

Everyone is a living remnant of a star long since collapsed, and Clarke can’t help but wonder if the carbon that makes up her hair is one in the same embedded in Lexa’s fingernails, that their atoms were tangled up together in the beginning and remember each other now that they are apart.

In some ways, a molecular attraction would be easier. Clarke could blame it on genetics and physics and predisposition, a web of activated DNA, neatly explained in a textbook for rational minds to understand. Clarke could write papers on why Lexa makes her blood burn in a way that has nothing to do with radiation.

But she doesn’t.

All she has are her thoughts and this hatred that’s long since bared its belly. She isn’t sure what it decided to be instead.

“Monty, no, don’t—“

A blast of hot air rushes past Clarke’s face. Monty stands in a smoking circle with a halo of black soot over his eyes, holding the remnants of an ill-fated project. Raven slumps back down into her seat.

“When I say that three-quarters of the things in here could explode, I’m not kidding.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“You can always use a little more danger in your life.”

He gingerly sets down the charred husk and goes to wash his hands. There’s a trail of things with similar burn-marks on one table, twisted and heaped together. Whatever metal they used to be made of all looks the same now.

“Making bombs or something, Raven?”

Her expression sours. “I wish. These aren’t _supposed_ to explode, but I’d suck off a Reaper if I could get my hands on some hydrazine.”

“Isn’t there some left at the dropship?”

“Maybe, but it’s a fat chance in Hell that those Farm Station fucks would let a lowly mechanic play around with a sleeping fireball.” She glances to the back of the room. “No offense, Monty.”

“None taken,” he responds. “They’re really strict with things people can and can’t do. If Pike wants you to make weapons, why is he keeping you from the thing that would do the most damage?”

Clarke pauses her inspection of what looks to be a telescope. “You’re making weapons?”

“ _Trying_ to make weapons,” Raven corrects. “He wants something with a lot of _boom_ but forgets that the gunpowder mixed here is seriously not the best thing to handle. I told him I could probably scrounge something up to improve his guns, but he’s insistent on the _boom_ factor.”

“When did he ask?”

“A week ago, I think? Just after you decided to go all _Wanheda_ and leave that Emerson fuck alive. Same night.”

Clarke has long gotten used to carrying dread in her belly, but its stirring still makes her sick. “Did he say why?”

“Don’t think he needs to. The human circle around Arkadia is a good enough explanation.”

“And you’ve been _helping_ him?”

Raven’s brow is stormy. “I don’t have much of a choice, Clarke. Some of us aren’t magically immune to the rules.”

“Right, right,” she huffs a breath out of her nose, “I’m sorry. I’m just…”

“I know.” She tosses another piece of scrap onto the reject table. “Nothing really feels like the right thing to do, huh?”

“I don’t think _the right thing_ exists anymore.” Clarke rolls the telescope in her palms, suddenly cold and clammy. “What have you told him?”

“Exactly the same thing I told you. It’s not going so well.”

Clarke taps the telescope against her knuckles; Raven narrows her eyes. “What are you planning, Griffin?”

“I… don’t know yet. I’ve brought up a few things with Lexa, but I haven’t been able to talk to her that much recently. We haven’t been able to plan.”

Raven crosses the workshop and punches in the code, sealing them from the hallway. Her grin is sharp and scheming when she turns around, stretched easily across her face. “Then let’s plan now.”

The still groans and belches steam. Raven makes herself comfortable, sitting opposite Clarke on her table. Her eyes glimmer with intrigue.

“Raven…” Monty sucks at his lower lip, “are you sure? Pike could jail us for treason.”

“I’d take prison over being dead.”

“You aren’t the one who spent two years locked up.”

Raven’s eyes soften as Monty rubs at the skin under his watch. They’ve developed a bond in the time that Clarke’s been gone and though its roots are spindly and small, things grow so quick on the ground. Maybe one day its trunk will be enough to replace the supports that other people ripped out when they left. Monty’s best friend may still walk with flesh and blood but his memory has long been condemned to nothing but ash in his mouth.

“I know this is about your mom,” Raven says, all low and quiet, and Monty’s head dips down as if caught. “You don’t have to support her just because you’re her son.”

“I do,” he responds, “it’s expected of me. We stick together, better or worse. Especially now that my dad, he’s…” Monty swallows the funeral pyre he never got to light. “I’m all she has.”

“Even if you know what she’s doing is wrong?”

“It… it isn’t my place to decide.”

Clarke knows little of blood ties and Raven even less, but she hears Lexa talk about duty sometimes. It sounds an awful lot like Monty, clipped and subdued, bent into place by an unspoken expectation that’s always shackled his heels. Jaha always liked to say that the Ark was one people and maybe it is, maybe Skaikru is one and Trikru is another, but she’s not so naïve to think that the patchwork of different colours scattered across this station runs only skin-deep.

“You know this isn’t the right thing,” Raven urges. “I _know_ you do.”

“That’s not the point, Raven! She’s my mom. It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Clarke shuffles until her chair is in front of him, her shoes resting lightly overtop his own. “You were the only one who believed me when I said something was wrong in Mount Weather.”

A glaze covers his eyes, but Clarke refuses to get sucked back there. Not while she’s needed somewhere else.

“Everyone was so busy enjoying themselves, but you knew, just like me. Maybe not at first. I don’t blame you. But you did, eventually. You saw past what people wanted you to see.”

“That’s… this is different. It’s different.”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t change anything. You’ve fought alongside me since day one on the ground, Monty. You were here when your mother, when _Farm Station_ wasn’t. You know how things work here.” She dips down to catch his gaze. “You know how this is going to end.”

He runs scenarios in his head, calculations and projections, but they all have the same solution. Arkadia as one mass grave, still and silent like the Mountain.

“She won’t listen.”

“I know.”

“She won’t understand.”

Clarke’s hands still his twitching fingers. They’ve been tapping out the radiation override on his knees – a nightmare stuck on loop. “Neither did Jasper.”

A single, hiccupping sob leaves his throat and Clarke lets herself get swept away in it. She’s back at the control room and Monty’s eyes are anguished as he pulls the code together. She’s trembling and Dante’s blood is still warm and Cage gets his retribution with each of her mother’s screams through the radio.

Monty squeezes her hands so hard it hurts and she remembers how he looked when he let the last piece of code fall into place – terrified that if he opened his mouth to cry, corpses would fall out.

“I need you,” Clarke doesn’t disguise the way her voice shakes, “I need the only other person who understands. I need the only other person who knows what we sacrificed to keep our friends alive.”

“I can’t do that again, Clarke,” he gasps, tears streaking down his cheeks. “I can’t. They don’t understand what—why I don’t—“

“That’s why we need to fix it.”

“What if—“

“No,” she says firmly, “this isn’t the Mountain. Not again.”

Raven comes around and puts an arm around them both. Clarke leans forward until her forehead rests against his, matches him breath for trembling breath in this circle.

“We can do this.” Her eyes are closed but they water anyway. “But I can’t do it without you, Monty.”

He’s quiet for a moment, his ragged exhale blowing across her face. Then, so small and fragile, “Does it ever get any easier?”

Clarke thinks back to another conversation, another place, just as raw and hollow as he was.

“No. You just get stronger.”

The still hisses. Clarke’s fingers knot with his and he grips them like a tether. Life spirals on outside Raven’s workshop, thoughtlessly moving forward, but here it is just them suspended in artificial stillness. Just their breath, and their memories, and their burden. Clarke sets her feet; she will be the thing that anchors him while he visits his ghosts if that is what he needs her to be.

Monty has watched his best friend fall apart for months but there is no such thing as a vicarious breakdown.

(The fact that she hasn’t had hers yet is pushed somewhere dark and deep. Clarke prays and prays and prays it will never see the light.)

He breathes deep once, twice, dragging shrapnel over the wounded parts of himself. Raven squeezes his shoulder. Their conjoined hands reel him back into orbit and Clarke feels the tremble that passes through them.

“Okay.”

The tears she presses into his hair are new and fresh and relieved, a knot at the base of her throat unfurling. Monty’s hand comes up to keep her there and Raven is crushing them together with too much enthusiasm. They sway for a moment until they find themselves on the floor, Clarke sprawled over Monty and Raven slung over them both. They’re a damp mess of limbs and rest there on the metal sharing warmth, sharing relief; Clarke lets out a breath she’s been holding since winter and it carries away with Raven’s laughter.

Sometimes, Clarke earnestly believes she can heal. In these moments where her hands are buried in Monty’s shirt and Raven’s breath is hot against her shoulder, her chest pressing steadily into Clarke’s back, there are glimpses. Not of who she used to be, no. But who she could be. Who she could turn into if only the guilt rolling like a rock in her stomach could be broken up and taken away like her mother removes kidney stones.

These glimpses never last. She shifts and Finn’s necklace digs into her side. An empty barrel labelled HYDRAZINE is half-hidden behind Raven’s workbench. A med-kit from Mouth Weather hangs forgotten in the corner of the workshop. They hasten to remind her that she is not that person, she is someone who carries their ghosts under her sternum because her head ran out of room. Healing requires closing the wound – Clarke isn’t afraid of her own anatomy. She would plunge her fingers into her own chest, press her ribs back into place if it would crush the void that makes it so hard to breathe, but these fissures are too misshapen to heal alone. She would be stitching herself back together with sutures made of their sinew, using the driftwood of their graves to splint her broken bones and Clarke may not believe in religion but it still feels like sacrilege.

“So,” Raven mumbles, her voice hoarser than it was, “we gonna cause some shit or what?”

Monty’s chuckle is more of a rumble. They slowly unwind their limbs, lazy and lethargic on catharsis, a loose circle on the floor. Raven stretches her bad leg across Clarke’s lap without so much as a hesitation. “Should you go get the Grounder Queen?”

The sun beams in the sky. Midday. “She’ll be doing patrols. We can talk to her next time.”

A few beats of silence. Monty fiddles with something he picked up off the floor until Raven rolls her eyes. “Some resistance we are. Come on. What do you have for us, Clarke?”

“Not much, to be honest. I’ve just been trying to keep up with all the changes.”

“What, like everyone becoming massive dickholes?”

“Raven!” Monty hisses, kicking her good hip. “Keep your voice down!”

“Cool it, Geek Number Two. The door is locked and I made sure there aren’t any bugs in here.”

He’s still uneasy, his toes curling in his shoes, so Raven drags herself across the floor until she can pull something from a drawer. She tosses it to him – a red light flickers on half-way through the throw and lets out an ear-piercing whistle. He scrambles to shut it off.

“Remember those tone generators? I messed with them a little bit. If you want to fry any potential baddies, a quick blast of this will make sure it never works again.”

“How?”

“I’m magic.”

He rolls his eyes but his shoulders sink from his ears. Raven settles comfortably, both legs on top of Clarke this time.

“So,” Clarke starts, “who can fill me in?”

“Let’s see…” Monty counts on his fingers. “Kane lost the election to Pike, Lincoln’s been locked up, Bellamy has lost his mind, Jasper is trying to give your mother a stroke, and Jaha is kind of nuts. Didn’t he leave with a bunch of people? They shot the Grounder that was with him and he didn’t even care.”

“I don’t know what happened to the others, but Murphy is back.” Clarke curls her hand over Raven’s ankles, both a comfort and a shackle. “He was the one who rode in last night.”

It’s subtle, but she feels the tremor as they stiffen. “What happened to him?”

“Looked like he got gutted by a sword or something. Mom thinks he’s been septic for a few days now.”

“Will he make it?” Raven stares stonily ahead, but her voice is too tight to pass for disinterest.

“I don’t know. His heart stopped twice on the table, and he’s lost a lot of blood. If he wakes up at all then it’s a good sign.”

She twirls the tone generator over and over in her hands. They let her, Clarke’s thumbs tracing patterns on her ankles, Monty’s own foot resting against her knee. Clarke can still feel the spray of a broken vessel in her eyes.

“Will Lexa attack us for it?”

“I…” Clarke chews on her lip. “Not if I can convince her that we didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Can you?”

Before Polis, she would have hesitated. Before the ceremony, before Nia, before the _soulou_ _gonplei,_ she would have doubted. But Lexa has since shown a complexity to her infuriating rationality, a human element to her unwavering patience. It is becoming easier and easier for Clarke to see _Lexa_ in _Heda_ and how these two merge together like an over-exposed photograph.

“Yeah. She’ll listen to me.” (She always does.)

“Problem solved.” Raven leans back on her elbows. “I can’t believe he might be brain-dead and still causes us shit.”

“That’s the Murphy we all know and hate,” Monty says.

“I just spent eight hours trying to stuff his guts back into the right place, guys,” Clarke grunts, “can we not talk about the fact that it might have been for nothing?”

“Right _._ Let’s talk about someone else we all hate.”

“Bellamy?”

“ _Raven._ ”

“What? You know I’m right, with all of his _I’m doing what’s best for my people_ bullshit. Who does he think he is? Clarke? She’s the only one that can get away with a line like that.”

“Well, we can start there. Do you think we could turn him?”

“I dunno,” Monty muses, “he seemed pretty set last time I talked to him.”

It’s been nothing but silence since she let Emerson go. Sometimes she catches his glare, burning hot and fierce, but she has no apologies nor explanations; the look in Lexa’s eyes when she swore _jus nou drein jus daun_ wouldn’t be enough for Bellamy like it was for Clarke.

“Who else then? I don’t know most of Farm Station.”

“Guys, hold on,” Clarke leans forward. Her braids tickle Raven’s feet. “I think we’re going about this the wrong way.”

“Do tell us, _Wanheda_.”

“I don’t think we have enough time to go after specific people.”

Raven’s brow knits into a frown. “But this entire thing is to overthrow Pike.”

“And we will. But everyone in his group is really devoted to him. It’s not going to work that way.”

“Then what?”

“Turn Arkadia,” Monty murmurs. His eyes gleam like someone had just lit a candle behind them. “That’s what we need to do.”

“Can we stop speaking in code, please?”

“It’s simple.” Monty turns towards them, his hands already weaving as he speaks. “Pike won by majority vote, right? It was close, but he did it. All we need to do is turn that majority back the other way.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” Raven comments, curling her good leg under herself. Still, Clarke can see the tell-tale signs of intrigue in the slant of her mouth.

“It is. Sort of. See, what’s the main problem right now?”

“Apart from the fact that everything is shit?”

Monty scrambles up from the floor and drags over one of Raven’s boards. “You’ve already memorized them, anyway,” he says as he erases the equations and finds a marker, dismissing her indignant protest.

A few moments later, they’re looking at a crude drawing of Arkadia.

“Okay, so,” Monty draws a wide loop around the board. “This is the Grounder barricade, five miles from our gates. Right in the tree-line. So long as they’re out there, people are more terrified of that threat than anything happening inside here.”

“As they should be,” Raven responds. “I know they aren’t here to hurt us, but damn if they aren’t pretty intimidating.”

“Right. Pike knows that. He keeps fueling the fire, spreading fear. As long as people keep looking over there, they don’t look here.” He taps the inside of Arkadia’s walls. “We need to change that.”

“How?”

Clarke’s lips curl into a grin. “Sabotage.”

Raven doesn’t try to hide the way her body angles towards them, eyebrow cocked. “Include me in this brain-sharing you’ve got going on, please.”

“When we met with Lexa, Pike wanted fifteen miles of land around Arkadia.”

Monty draws a wider circle around them both.

“This, in turn, had a village right in the middle.”

He draws an X.

“He didn’t care. He’d burn it to the ground to get what he wanted.”

“What did he want?”

“My mom and a few others have been taking soil and water samples,” Monty picks up, “testing the radiation levels, nitrogen levels, everything you can think of. They take some of it back to their greenhouse and see what can be done with it.”

Raven’s head tilts. “Isn’t that a long way for some dirt?”

“Ten miles can make a lot of difference in quality, Raven. You’d be amazed at how fast things can grow in ideal situations.”

“Let me guess… the soil around Arkadia isn’t great.”

“Sandy,” Monty agrees, “made up of pebbles under a really thin layer of topsoil. Nearly useless.”

“So _that’s_ why the garden out front looks sad.”

“Why haven’t we tried something else?” Clarke asks. “There’s a river within the bounds, we could be fishing. Kids could be digging for bait. The fish around here are huge, the ones I saw in Polis were as big as my head.”

“Because Pike doesn’t want to tell our people we’re starving,” Raven muses, chewing on her lip. Her eyes dance over Monty’s diagram. “With the Grounders circling us, he needs everyone to stay calm. That’s why he wants to expand so badly.”

“Doesn’t he realize the whole point of the Coalition would be to _help_ each other? We could have traded medical supplies or tech for food and never need to hunt again.”

“You weren’t here for his whole rant about a _self-sufficient_ Arkadia. He still thinks it’s the Ark, one station against space.”

“He’s in for a dose of reality,” Clarke mutters darkly. “Everyone needs something on the ground.”

“That’s exactly what we need to get him to see,” Monty agrees. “Arkadia is great in terms of fire-power and medical tech, but we’re useless trying to take care of ourselves. Even with the Grounders helping us over the winter we still barely pulled in enough food keep our storage half-full.”

“And with winter ending, Pike would have been banking on a lot of hunting and gathering to make ends meet while they learn how to farm,” Raven picks up. “Which is now ruined by Lexa’s army. So that means…”

Clarke mouth sets into a grim smile. “If this goes on for long enough, then Arkadia starves.”

“At which point, people won’t care what’s out _there_ because they’ll be too busy trying to eat Octavia’s horse.” Raven settles back on her elbows, crossing her ankles in Clarke’s lap. “To add icing onto the cake, the Commander will make an announcement that whoever wishes to leave Arkadia will do so unharmed after things get downright unbearable in here. Sound about right?”

“I’m sure something similar can be arranged.”

“Sneaky. I love it.”

“We’ll have to be careful,” Monty cautions. “Destroying it all at once will raise suspicion. We have to get rid of it gradually, a bit at a time. I have a feeling we’re settling in for the long run.”

“How long is this asshole going to stay in power?”

Clarke shrugs. “It takes as long as it takes.”

“Then let’s get planning.”

Farm Station has done their best with this half-fertile land that Arkadia has claimed. The seeds not smothered by the harsh Azgeda winter have been sowed, their first shoots pushing tentatively from the ground. All the books that went up with the Ark warned about planting too early lest the frost sink its claws into the husk, but this is not the same earth that literature once knew. They dig blindly, but those that could give their shovels purpose are branded the enemy.

Clarke remembers the fields before Polis, wide and sprawling and green, farmers with their hands covered in dirt. They pull the fruit of their labor from the earth, twisted and ugly from radiation-soaked soil, but the flesh of their toil is healthy and they enjoy their spoils.

Not even three day’s ride away, Skaikru hungers. Their crops are young still, not ready to support a city, and they will grow slow and unsteady without a skilled hand to support them. The greenhouse shelters them from the environment but it is still young itself, ramshackle and haphazard, letting its trapped heat trickle out from open corners.

“The storehouse is our biggest concern,” Monty says, jotting down some numbers on the board. “It has everything we managed to gather so far, as well as what we got from TonDC over the winter. That’s where the bulk of our food is staying.”

“Are we sure we can’t just explode it?” Raven sighs.

“We don’t want them to know anyone is messing with it. That’ll just help Pike.”

“Spoil it, then?”

“Our best option,” Monty agrees. “The meat is mostly smoked, so we can’t do much there. All the vegetables except for the potatoes and onions will spoil really quickly anyway. We should start working on the grains.”

Clarke’s eyebrows raise. “We have grains?”

She’d eaten many new things in Polis, breads pounded flat and hard, slathered with salt and butter. Dairy is a foreign creature to Skaikru, having never seen another animal besides themselves for many years. Lexa had watched with the slightest uptick of her brows as Clarke had devoured three plates before she remembered to breathe.

“A bunch was delivered on the Commander’s orders during the winter. People are still learning how to work it.”

_My people are your people, Clarke._

“—it’ll be what we’re all eating at the end, so the less of it the better.”

Clarke blinks as Monty clears away the miniature map. “Are we done?”

“I’m sure we have more to do, but you look like you’re asleep with your eyes open.”

“No,” she protests, wiping at her eyes, “I’m okay. Keep going.”

Raven scratches behind Clarke’s ear and her fingernail comes away rusted with dry blood. “You need a shower and a nap, Princess. It’s okay. We probably need a few days to get everything set up.”

When was the last time someone told her to take care of herself? Months ago, it must have been. Niylah?

(Clothes folded on her bed. Bathwater already drawn and waiting. Food prepared to be eaten. No acknowledgement needed, or even wanted – the only gratitude being the way Clarke lost the bite of malnourishment around her jaw, how her shoulders loosened and fell from her ears.)

She bites her tongue against the sudden prickle of tears. If Raven notices, the only mention is a soft squeeze to her knee before she’s staggering to her feet. Her twisted pieces of scrap metal glint like her brace and Clarke burns with an idea.

“Hey, Raven?” Clarke asks. The other girl turns around, a piece of scrap in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. “If Lexa can get you some hydrazine, could you hide it from Pike long enough to make some _boom_ for us, too?”

Raven’s grin is slow and wide, more genuine than anything she’s seen out of her since she got there. “Griffin, if she can get me some of that, I will _personally_ clean Lexa’s shoes. With my tongue. Double buffed.”

 

Clarke leaves lighter than when she came despite the tangled mess of plans wrapped around her brain. No explosions yet, but a new project to be put into play. Death comes in many forms.

Clarke bumps into a wall as she turns. The guard looks at her oddly but she levels her best glare and swallows the hiccup that edges into her throat. Monty’s _fayawada_ tumbles uneasily in her stomach – a parting gift. _You look like you need it._

She all but crawls into her bed. Her cloak pools on the floor, her boots shucked haphazardly by the door. She doesn’t bother to remove her pants or shirt before twisting herself into the blankets like a spider would its web.

Clarke straddles the line between sleep and wakefulness for what seems forever until she notices the beeping. Her brows twitch into a frown, one hand diving under her mattress to find the noise. Cold plastic meets her fingers – ah, the radio. Of course.

“Yes?” she mumbles into the speaker, like she doesn’t know exactly who it is.

“Clarke?”

“Lexa,” she almost slurs, exhaustion and moonshine sloshing together in her head, “yes, hi. Whadd’yu need?”

“Clarke? Are you well?”

“Just… tired. And maybe drunk.”

“It… Clarke, it is early afternoon. Why have you been drinking so early?”

She can’t tell if it’s scorn or concern in Lexa’s voice. Not sure if she wants to. Her eyes droop shut.

“Monty gave me some. I’m okay. Just,” her jaw cracks on a yawn, “I didn’t get to sleep last night. Surgery.”

“Was there an accident?”

“No,” she hums, “Murphy came back. Found him half-dead—“ Clarke’s eyes pop open. “Wait. You said something happened last night.”

“Did I?”

“Don’t play dumb, Lexa.”

When Clarke closes her eyes again, she can envision the twitch in Lexa’s jaw. “My barricade was proven… weak, at a point. A lone rider made it through before they could be stopped.”

“Black horse?”

“Yes.”

“That was Murphy. He was unconscious on his horse when it got to Arkadia. My mom and I spent forever putting his organs back in the right place after she stitched them all up.”

“I see. Will he survive?”

“She doesn’t know. If he makes it tonight, then probably.”

Lexa hums, and Clarke lets herself float for a second. The tide of Lexa’s breath is soothing through the tinny speakers, rushing from where it’s held close to her face, and it takes everything left in Clarke to not drift off to its rhythm. There’s just something amiss, a subtle tug in the back of her skull that keeps her awake.

“What is it, Lexa?”

There’s silence on the other line. Clarke knows Lexa isn’t surprised about being caught, nor angry. This quiet is a gathering, Lexa weighing sentence fragments and piecing them together so as not to be misunderstood. Not a single word out of place. It sounds exhausting.

But then, Clarke’s filter is frayed and full of holes around Lexa. Entire paragraphs slip out without meaning to, falling from her tongue like an avalanche until she is buried by the things that should remain in her head. The radio is dangerous – Clarke has no choice but to let her reins slacken lest they cease talking at all. Lexa is more of a listener.

“Murphy is Skaikru?”

“He is.”

“Why was he outside the barricade?”

Clarke rolls over, radio smashed between her cheek and the bed. “Who knows? Murphy does whatever the hell he wants.”

Another silence, heavier this time. Lexa sucks in a breath. “I had to punish four of my _gonas_ last night. They were the ones who let your Murphy slip through.”

“Lexa…”

“The barricade is non-negotiable. I was clear, and yet your Chancellor spares no time in testing me. Does he think me foolish, Clarke? Savage and irrational? Does he think I will let him do as he pleases?”

In truth, Clarke does believe this. Pike hasn’t seen what she’s seen – not the peaceful villages, nor the Ambassador’s table, or even Polis in all its glory. He hasn’t seen the woven blanket of stars at night with a mirror of torchlight constellations. He hasn’t seen the people so calm and full of joy in a land that insists on taking it from them because their _Heda_ has kept them safe. He only knows what he has lost and how it wears so similar a face to the Commander’s.

“We hadn’t seen Murphy in months, Lexa. He left Arkadia before I did, with Jaha.”

“And he hadn’t returned?”

“Jaha did, but not with Murphy. He hates everyone here. The only reason he’d come back is because he knew he was dying.”

Lexa considers each piece of information as they come and clicks them into place like a jigsaw puzzle. Wells would have liked her. Maybe someone could have finally beaten him in a chess game.

“I… believe you. Though part of _me_ believes it would be easier not to.”

“Trust me, I know. What about your warriors? Will they believe it?”

“It does not matter what they believe, _Klark._ It is what I believe, and that will be enough. It must.”

A shiver runs down Clarke’s spine as she hammers the words home.

“Your Murphy has made it harder for your Chancellor. My warriors are not eager to taste the lash again, and have tightened the barricade. I do not believe that even I could make it through without being spotted.”

“That’s a good thing. Maybe he’ll decide against doing something stupid.”

“Lesser odds do not dissuade stubborn men, Clarke.”

“Speaking of stubborn… how did the Ambassadors take this? Calling for blood, I’m sure.”

Lexa snorts before she can stop it, an honest exhale that’s half amusement and half exasperation.

“I have sent them back to Polis. An ambassador for the Trikru will take my place while I am away. A city cannot run with no leader, however many ways that power is split.”

“That has nothing to do with them being rude and generally unpleasant, does it?”

“Strange. I believe I overheard them saying that about you, once.”

“Lexa,” Clarke admonishes, “did you just crack a joke? At my expense? I didn’t think you could.”

“There are many things you do not know about me, Clarke.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“Telling you defeats the purpose.”

Clarke winds herself in the sheets until they become cloth shackles. Exhaustion hammers at the backs of her eyelids but she keeps them open. It is rare to find Lexa like this, casual and lax, and she cherishes them all the more as the days go by. The camp has started to stink of unrest and unease – talking to Lexa is like breathing in candles and smoke to mask the rot.

“I guess I’ll just have to find out for myself.”

“And when would you find time for this… endeavour?”

“When we finally throw Pike out on his ass and go back to Polis.”

There’s a pause, heavier than all the others before it. Clarke realizes too late what slipped through her battered filter before she could catch it. Her face burns.

“We?”

“Uh, I meant—that was—“

“You wish to come back to Polis?”

“I—yes. If I’m welcome once this is over.”

“You will always have a place _, Klark kom Skaikru._ ” _With me._

The way Lexa’s voice clips her syllables makes it sound like she’s erased a few soundbites, obliterated part of the sentence before it could leave her mouth. Still, Clarke hears what she’s taken away, just like she hears a lot of things Lexa never ends up saying. She’s the only one who ever hears the ghosts that never part from Lexa’s tongue.

There’s another moment of that charged silence that’s becoming an old friend, traded in breaths between them. It always brings them closer to _something_ but Clarke still doesn’t know what. Doesn’t think she will until it happens.

“So. I talked to Monty and Raven. We’ve come up with some plans.”

“Let me hear them.”

Gratefully, Clarke switches topics. It never completely takes attention away from this thing between them, growing so big and so bold, but it lets her forget. That’s enough for now. She details whatever plans they have, leaving gaps open as they are for Lexa to fill, never interrupted. The entirety of Arkadia could learn from Lexa’s listening skills.

“You wish to poison the soil you have?”

“That’s one of the ideas, yeah.”

“That means you will not be able to farm there for some time.”

“Monty says the ground is pretty close to useless to start with. And think of it as a… reminder to Arkadia. Even more reason for history not to repeat itself.”

Lexa shuffles around from her end. Her armor clinks a little, buckles and belts as she settles, until it hits the floor with a _whoomp_. The sound goes straight between Clarke’s legs and stays.

Maybe one day, when all of this is over, she could know the sound through more than just a radio.

“—the ash should be a good enough vector.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Mix ash into your manure. It will poison the land and nothing will grow.”

Raven said Monty’s been complaining about their fertilizer for weeks, how scarce and difficult to produce, how _disgusting._ It had been the same on the Ark, sure, but systems had done most of the job for them. Now they must let it age by hand in buckets with masks and gloves and a strong stomach. Arkadia’s struggling soil will not yield its treasure without help.

Clarke just can’t believe that she’s _still_ eating her own shit after coming to the ground.

“We’ll try it out. Raven just wants to burn the entire thing down, actually, which reminds me. Can you do me a favour?”

“It depends on what you would have me do.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard about it - the bridge? Raven’s bomb?”

“Yes. Anya lost her _Seken_ there.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“It is in the past. What do you need?”

“We’re trying to stock up. Pike is having her make weapons, specifically explosives, but won’t give her anything strong to work with. We want her to make them for us instead.”

“Why would you need explosives, Clarke?”

“I don’t know. But if we _do_ need it, it’s ready.”

Lexa hums. “What if Pike finds this? I do not want him in possession of something so powerful.”

“We’ll get Octavia to hide it. She kept _herself_ hidden for sixteen years, she can handle this.”

“Very well. I will fetch what you need.”

“There should still be some hydrazine at the dropship. It’s the fuel we used to fire the engines when we were being attacked.”

“This is what you used to burn my people alive.”

Clarke swallows. Lexa is quiet, always quiet, but there is an edge that still bleeds. Death comes in vibrant pink for the Trikru, in the red of the Mountain’s gas and the orange of Skaikru’s explosions. A sunset of brutality.

“It is. But I’m willing to use it against my own people if it means fewer have to die.”

Death has no distinction. Neither does its Commander.

“If this is what you require,” Lexa says, “then I will retrieve it. My hands are yours.”

Another ghost slips through the speaker of Clarke’s radio from where it crawled out of Lexa’s throat, and Clarke doesn’t fight as it rests almost comfortably over her heart. It’s not like the Mountain that grinds her into the dust and makes it hard to leave her bed. It is just an acknowledgement, a reminder of how far they have traveled, how long the road yet runs. Clarke lets it fill her lungs and it is enough.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for being this late other than my stunning lack of consistency and motivation. But it's here, it's queer, and it's angsty. Sort of. What we all wanted, right?

_The Natblidas pile into their bunks, covered in wolf-skin and linen, their little faces rubbed clean and raw. Their day has been long and hard and their sleep-shirts rub against their tender sun-bitten flesh, salve smoothed over the red parts of themselves as they settle down for rest._

_“Tell us more, Heda,” Minos mumbles, her sleep-thickened tongue slurring in her mouth, “finish your story.”_

_“There is much more to say than can be said tonight,” Lukas says, running his fingers through her braids just once. “And you have heard quite enough already.”_

_She takes that with a sleepy acceptance. Her fingers wind in her sheets and Minos is so young but already scarred, her knuckles a knot of healed tissue. Life has never been easy for a Natblida, but he thinks of Xander and the sword that would have gutted the life clean from his body without the machines from Arkadia to keep him alive. It has never been easy, but it was also harder, once._

_He turns to leave but a hand wraps in his red shawl. Shar watches him in a way he doesn’t usually, his eyes sharp and dark and quiet._

_“Heda,” he says so softly that Lukas has to lean next to his mouth, “why did Stotheda risk the Kongeda for one person? Isn’t her first duty to her people?”_

_Lukas smiles. “How old are you, Shar?”_

_“Thirteen summers, Heda.”_

_“And have you ever fought in a true battle?”_

_His brows pull downwards, an unhappy flush crawling along his cheeks. “No.”_

_“Have you ever taken a life?”_

_“No.”_

_“Then that is why.”_

_Shar’s mouth twists, as if tasting something sour. Lukas sighs._

_“Stotheda did what she did out of love, yes. But not only love for Wanheda. Love for her people. It is this love that lets your hands go unsullied, though I am sure she would have killed at least a dozen gona by your age.”_

_He runs his fingers through Shar’s cropped hair, rubbing the pads of his fingers along the prickly sides of his scalp. “This is why love is not weakness, my Natblida. It has been many cycles, but Stotheda’s love is still felt in every man, woman, and child. It is why she is called the Ogunzaun-Lida. It is why her and Wanheda still bring balance to this world after their physical forms were reduced to dust and returned to the ground, together. She always wanted this for us. It was simply fate that Wanheda would be the catalyst to deliver it at long last.”_

_Shar takes this without a word, eventually retreating with a short, troubled nod. Lukas smiles._

_“Do not brood so deeply. The spirits are content, and our people thrive. It is all a leader could ever ask for.”_

_Lukas blows out the candle when he leaves, but knows Shar will be awake for a long time after darkness settles. He is stubborn and steadfast, reluctant to hear the teachings of the last true Heda. Much like Lukas was, once._

_How times change._

 

“When I said I wanted to be a shit-stirrer, I didn’t mean _literally_.”

Clarke shoots Raven a dark look from behind her goggles. A stolen mask from the medical bay does little to hide her grimace. “It’s not my preferred activity, either.”

She lifts her shovel and lets the fertilizer fall back with a heavy, wet sound. Sweat drips from her forehead and into the bucket. Maybe it’ll improve the smell.

It’s dark. The lights of Arkadia make the sweep in lazy circles, never finding the trio hidden away in Farm Station’s corner. Raven stirs and Clarke shovels and Monty measures, a slow efficiency broken only by the odd retch. They’ll have to burn their clothing at this rate.

“What’s the point of this again, Geek Number Two?” Raven grunts, nearly gagging when some of it sloshes out. “I can’t believe I’m playing in my own shit instead of sleeping.”

“We need to make the soil more alkaline,” Monty mumbles, only half listening. He scoops up a handful of ash and sprinkles it into their current bucket. “This is the easiest way.”

“Is it? Is it _really?_ ”

He glances up. The spotlight does another sweep and they see how accurately his skin takes after his family name. “Trust me. I don’t want to be here anymore than you. More ash.”

Clarke digs her shovel in the bucket, scoops, pours. Raven returns to her slow, circular toil.

“This was genius, Clarke. I should have realized how easily the ash would change the pH of the fertilizer.”

A bead of sweat rolls down her spine. Her shirt sticks to her in uncomfortable and intimate places. “Lexa’s idea.”

“Really?”

She goes to wipe her forehead and thinks better of it. Salt catches in her eyelashes. “You sound surprised.”

“It’s not that! It’s just that I, uh… I—“

She raises an eyebrow.

“Okay,” he says sheepishly, “it’s exactly that.”

“They might not have the science, but they were harvesting when the ground was way worse off than this.”

“I think it’s more that it’s your Commander who came up with it,” Raven interjects, giving one vicious swirl of her shovel.

Clarke’s cheeks pink in the darkness. “She’s smart.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that… she’s the Commander, you know? Doing big, Commander-y things, leading the Coalition and stuff. I didn’t think she’d know anything about farming.”

“She tries to know a lot of things. I think it helps her connect with her people.”

“Pike could learn a thing or two from her.”

A bubble of gas escapes and their masks are no protection.

“If…” Raven is unusually pale, even in the dark, “if I puke in this, will they notice?”

“Please don’t,” Clarke wheezes, “the sound will set me off.”

“I think we’re done.” Monty is already stumbling in the dark, sealing the lids again. They put their shovels back where they found them and all but stagger outside. Clarke read a book once about the people who lived off the land before the bombs, their sweatshacks filled with steam and smoke, crawling back out into the world seared and changed.

She doesn’t get any spirit visions – even dead animals avoid her stench.

“I feel diseased,” Raven complains, shucking off her jacket with a disgusted grimace. “Am I ever going to smell normal again?”

“Mom says vinegar is the best way to get the smell out.”

“We don’t have vinegar.”

“I guess regular soap will have to do.”

“What about the clothing?”

Clarke twists, feels the fabric cling to her spine. “I say burn it.”

“Agreed.”

“Fair.”

They slink their way back to Raven’s workshop. It takes longer than usual when have to weave their way through the night patrols; Clarke gets trapped between Monty and Raven and nearly passes out.

Their clothing gets thrown into Raven’s furnace with little care for propriety. Monty unbuckles Raven’s brace as she struggles with her shirt, and Clarke peels her socks off her sweaty feet. The fire flares a little as they feed it. Clarke watches it dance in reds and yellows from her sticky position on the floor.

“I have to say, Princess,” Raven is wobbly without her brace, a building with one too many broken supports, “the view isn’t bad.”

Clarke props her head up in her palm as Raven collapses beside her. “Thanks. I guess you aren’t ugly, either.”

“Cheers.”

Monty shifts a little more timidly, half-hidden behind the furnace, clad in only his underwear. He’s a little bigger than Clarke remembers, a little more filled out. Three months of peace was good to him.

“Raven, can I use your shower?”

Clarke turns over, scandalized. “You have a _shower_?”

“Not officially. Just a little something I rigged up… water pressure’s shit, though. Runs near the furnace but it’s lukewarm at best.”

“That doesn’t— _running water_. That _doesn’t_ come from a freezing river.”

“Ah, I see how it is. Now that the secret’s out, you’re only going to use me for my plumbing.”

Monty clears his throat, bouncing from foot to foot. Raven waves him off. “Go on. I’m sure Princess can wait another few minutes. Let it run for a bit first otherwise it’ll make your balls shrink up into your pelvis.”

He grimaces but does as told, and a moment later they can hear the whine of running water. Clarke settles the best she can against the floor, reeking of shit and sweat and exhaustion. Raven rolls on her front and goes to pillow her cheek on her hands but thinks better of it, awkwardly tucking her head against her bicep instead. Her spine lengthens as she stretches, a flicker of pain followed by relief.

“How’s your leg?”

She shrugs. “Hurts.”

(It seems that no matter whose mouth it comes out of, it always reeks of understatement.)

Raven’s eyes travel down the ladder of her ribs in the quiet. “How’s your, uh,” she gestures lamely, “everything?”

It’s been nearly a month since Clarke was dragged to Polis and she’s begun to fill out again, regaining the swell of her breasts and the width of her hips, but there’s still a hunger to her cheekbones, a starkness to her temples and brows and chin. Her legs aren’t nearly as sturdy as Raven remembers, her waist not as thick. Winter is hard on those alone.

“Is this your attempt at a heart to heart?”

“Hey, at least I’m trying. I can’t be good at everything.”

“I’m…” she bites down on the _okay_ that threatens to leave her mouth, “trying not to think about it. Not until this is done.”

“But what happens if it takes a long time?”

“Then I wait.”

Raven regards her with a critical eye. “You know, that’s probably not the best way to deal with it.”

“Like you’re a paragon of mental health.”

Her mouth opens to protest before she relents with a sigh, rolling over to her side and worming closer instead. Clarke doesn’t resist as Raven props her head on Clarke’s shoulder, chest to elbow. A snapshot of serenity. “Can you believe this?”

Clarke hums, tracing patterns on the ceiling.

“I’m naked with the girl who my dead boyfriend cheated on me with, and this isn’t even close to the weirdest thing that’s happened to me in the past four months. _And_ she has a nicer rack. But not by much.”

Finn’s noted absence doesn’t send that familiar, dull shock of pain through her chest. Instead, it wobbles as Clarke laughs, deep and throaty and taken by surprise. Raven grins and nudges her face against Clarke’s shoulder, only to rear back a moment later with a grimace.

“You stink.”

“So do you.”

“The shit will settle in my bones if Monty takes any longer. Monty! _Monty!_ ”

“That’s not how it works, Raven,” Clarke interjects dryly, but Monty is already skidding around the corner, towel wrapped hastily around his hips and hair dripping onto the floor. His eyes are wild and panicked as they lock onto the two girls sprawled out on the floor.

“What? Are you okay? Is it your leg? Do you need me to—“ He cuts off his own ramblings and glances away at their nudity. Raven stretches languidly, a cat uncurling its spine, and peels herself from Clarke. The two of them groan as their skin unsticks like velcro.

“Chill, Geek Number Two. I’m fine. You were just taking forever.”

Clarke doesn’t miss the affectionate smile, though she tries to hide it. Something warm settles under her sternum as Monty scuffs his foot against the floor. Raven attempts to roll to standing but winces and sits back down hard.

“Clarke, a little help?”

She looks at her for a moment before clambering to her feet and snatching another towel from under Raven’s desk. “I think I’ll leave you there for a few minutes. I want to shower before you steal all the water.”

“Wha—you _bitch_! Monty, help me up!”

The boy shakes his head. Water droplets fly over nearby surfaces. “You’re gross, I don’t want to touch you.”

“Take that back! I’m beautiful at all times.”

“Raven, you’re literally covered in shit.”

“And you’re literally _full_ of shit.”

Clarke slips away to the sound of their bickering. The shower is still running from when Monty left it in a rush – the moan that threatens to slip past her lips as the water hits her back is obscene and fully warranted. It’s been months of baths, first lukewarm in Niylah’s shack and then hot and scented at Polis, oils and candles she’d learned later were from Lexa’s personal stash. Before that was a shower at the bottom of a waterfall, roaring and frothing and almost pounding her into the rocks below.

It’s one thing that reminds her of the Ark that she _doesn’t_ hate.

The pressure takes forever to wet her hair and her arms hurt from effort to lather the shampoo. Water turns brown around her feet and if only everything was this easy to wash away, maybe one day she’d finally clean the blood from under her fingernails and behind her ears. But _that’s_ there to stay as much as the tattoo that wraps around Lexa’s bicep, as the pink scar she’d glimpsed at Raven’s hip that spreads like a star.

She’s in and out within ten minutes despite the temptation, slipping into the spare clothes she’d brought earlier that night. Raven leans heavily on the desk and the pang of guilt at making her wait is chased away by that familiar clever grin.

“You’ve had your fun, Clarke,” Raven makes her way there without touching her bad leg to the ground, “but it’s mama’s turn.”

“Gross.”

“Get lost, both of you.”

There’s no venom behind it but it’s late and exhaustion pulls at their eyelids like stones. Monty says his goodbyes with a soft, lazy hug that smells like soap and a knowing smile. Clarke finds her way back to her room with her eyes half-shut, fingers trailing along hallways to keep her on the path when they slip closed. She follows the metal maze like a minotaur long used to its prison.

She finds her bed and shucks off her boots that still have manure in the creases. The bed is hard and thin but she’s slept maybe four times in the past week and it feels like her bed of furs back in Polis.

She dreams of corpses sprouting from the earth, their branches long and distended and weak.

 

When Clarke next opens her eyes, someone is underneath her and her knife paints a razor-thin necklace of beaded rubies at their throat.

Reality echoes sometimes, distorts itself like a stone dropped into water before settling, and in this particular ripple she sees Lexa’s face calm and clear under the blade. Her warpaint is gone and her braids are free and she’s so _young,_ so knowing and accepting of what Clarke must take from her. A burden they share, equally but with different roots, and Clarke has not yet learned to take the weight without blood to feed it.

But someone at peace with the knife is not vengeance. She wants Lexa to open her mouth and snarl, scream, to match this beast inside of Clarke that is clawing its way up her spine and demand her own retribution for the hundreds of people Clarke herself has put to the flame. She wants the deity she sees under Lexa’s skin to come loose, to rise like the cloud from the biggest bomb to ever touch this soil. She wants the only other person who understands how it feels to wear godhood like clothing unable to be shed, for the only thing she hears to be the crunch of her sternum as Lexa forces her hand around the void in her chest, to close and compact it with her bare fist as if it would cut out the screaming that comes from inside it.

But.

Lexa doesn’t do that. She doesn’t even cry out. She simply stares and blinks and even smiles, just a little, enough to make Clarke’s hands shake where they hover. Her eyes are soft and green and maybe she isn’t a god wearing human skin, but a strange mix of the two that fade into each other like a photograph taken in motion. A blending of souls, slow and over-exposed, but purposeful in their faults. It’s terribly fitting that Lexa would take up immortality as she does most other things: quietly.

Fitting, perhaps, but not surprising. Lexa has always spoken best in silence.

It makes that dying thing in Clarke groan, makes her bare her teeth and press down like it would make a difference at all, but in this feverish half-memory her ears are still asleep and dreaming has a way of making quiet things so very loud. Lexa pressing her own throat willingly into the blade fills the fault-sized fissure in her soul in ways blood never could. Without that cavernous emptiness, that amplified echo, all the voices that clamour for attention fade out and in that blessed silence something else entirely passes between them.

She gulps a breath and growls and knows she isn’t going to kill her. She can’t. That hatred is gone.

Lexa breaks her gaze to tilt her chin and more red spills out, but—isn’t her blood black? 

Clarke blinks and reality sinks back into her bones like settling mud. Her mother is pressed into the mattress and Clarke’s trembling knife spills red into the sheets, both of them shaking in different tempo. She looks at her for a moment like she can’t fathom her, like she’s a stranger, before the knife falls limply from her fingers and she’s scrambling back and away.

Abby cups a hand to her neck and the wound isn’t deep, no more than a thin line, but she looks at Clarke like she can see her scars for the first time.

“Clarke, what—“ she cuts herself off, blinking slow and shocked, “why did you—“

“Sorry,” Clarke mumbles, drawing her knees to her chest. “I thought—it doesn’t matter.”

“It _doesn’t matter?_ Clarke, you were going to kill me!”

“I wasn’t.”

“You had a knife to my throat!”

“I _wasn’t!_ ”

“Then—then tell me what that was. Why do you sleep with a knife?”

That one is easy. “I got used to it when I was living in the woods. Animals can sneak up on you, or people. The last _ripas_ are still wandering.”

“You don’t need it here, Clarke. You’re safe.”

“I’m not safe anywhere.”

Abby rips a portion of her bedsheet and holds it to her throat. Blood crawls along the thin fabric like rising tide. Clarke takes short, shallow breaths and tries not to vomit.

Her mother inches forward until her hand brushes the top of her foot. Clarke lets her, hands clenching and releasing, looking anywhere but forward. “Sweetheart,” she says, but her voice has taken on that calmness she reserves for patients and Clarke _hates_ it, “what did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“I called your name three times and you just kept the knife there. It’s okay, Clarke. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

She considers the truth. But something about Lexa splayed beneath her, something about green eyes and parted lips and a tenderness that wasn’t entirely imagined, is too soft for her to share. Too precious. Abby won’t understand – all she’ll know is that Lexa is the thing that haunts her waking nightmares. What her mind decides to pick when it’s terrified and traumatized. She won’t know why.

(Won’t know that these days, it’s the only thing that brings her comfort. That brings her _peace_.)

“Cage,” she says instead, and the name is sour enough that she doesn’t have to fake the grimace. “When the assault was happening on Mount Weather.”

“Oh, honey,” Abby sighs, her hand skating up to her knee. Clarke clenches her jaw and looks down. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m fine. It happens sometimes.”

“We can help you. We can get you into treatment, or maybe try some medications, or—“

In the villages, everyone knows that when some warriors return, their wounds are not visible to the naked eye. The nightmares are a lesion in their heads, their anxiety and tremors just as much a disability as a limp. They have given much for their people and in return are given time and place to heal, a quiet honour no less worthy than those who have lost limbs in battle.

_(“But… don’t people help them to get better?”_

_“Of course. The village helps carry them when their burdens become too great. In time, they can walk on their own again.”_

_“They’re not seen as weak?”_

_Lexa raises a brow. “Do you believe them to be weak?”_

_“No, of course not! I just mean… my people aren’t as forgiving when it comes to mental illness. It’s not the same to them.”_

_“They can talk to the fisas and the shamans if they wish, but many simply live with their scars. It is much like a missing hand. They can adapt and heal and flourish, in time, but it is not something to be fixed. It stays with you.”_

_Lexa casts a knowing eye over Clarke, her hands wound tight in her furs. “Even the strongest warriors are susceptible to mind-sickness, Clarke. It does not make them less.”_

_“Even Heda?”_

_There’s a breath of silence. Lexa turns and Clarke sees her shoulders hitch, just once, before settling. Her voice is quiet. “No. Not Heda.”_

_Clarke wonders if anyone helped Lexa stand after Costia. If anyone could._

A Commander is never weak. _)_

“I don’t need treatment, Mom.”

“I know this is hard, sweetie. You’ve been through a lot. No one is going to blame you after seeing the things you did.”

“You mean _doing_ the things I did.”

Abby’s mouth tightens and Clarke recognizes that expression, too.

“I can’t help you if you won’t let me.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t need your version of help, okay? I know we barely have any medication left. Other people need it more.”

Outside, the bustle of the Ark goes on. The farmers rise to tend early to the budding fields, and the guards chatter as they change rotation. Clarke holds her breath for what feels like forever as Abby’s gaze flits over her tired face.

“You’re worthy of help too, Clarke. I know you still don’t believe it, but people want to see you get better.”

Despite all that’s happened, it’s no easier to stop the reflexive sting in her eyes. Her jaw clenches and she glances to the side of her bed so that Abby can’t see the film gathering across her vision.

Her mother sighs, free hand squeezing her ankle.

“I’ll be in the medical bay if you change your mind. Please consider it.”

“Okay.”

They both know she won’t. Abby stands up to leave and Clarke hates the way her eyes are always sad these days when she looks at her, a forlorn kind of pain that comes like a phantom from her own flesh and blood. A kiss is pressed to her forehead.

“I came to tell you that Murphy woke up. You should go see him.”

Trying to make conversation with Bellamy is more appealing, but at least Murphy hates this place as much as she does.

 

 

She wraps herself in her blue cloak and stalks the hallways like a ghost. Guards part for her like magic bids their feet to move – maybe it does these days. Some whisper that she’s a witch. That she talks with darkness when she sleeps. But there is no sleep for Clarke, and no time to whisper with demons. The purple bruises in the hollows of her eyes attest to that.

Murphy looks worse than she does. He is wrapped from neck to hip in white gauze, the pretty paleness of his skin marked blue and black and indigo. The machines salvaged from the fall track his traitorous heart as it beats against the stitches that keep it from falling apart.

“Wow, Princess,” he says, and the way his tongue is split makes him slur the words that leave his lips, “and I thought _I_ looked like shit.”

“Next time you need me to keep your heart going, I’m just going to leave it.”

He tilts his head to the side, the brush of his unkempt hair soft against his collarbone. “I died, didn’t I?”

“Few times.” She all but throws herself into the chair beside his bed. “Didn’t my mom tell you?”

“Dunno, she just shot me with a needle, said some shit and left. Didn’t understand a fucking thing when it kicked in.”

“You’ve been asleep four days. Rode in on a horse nearly dead, then died on the table until we got you back. We managed to sew you up, but I think you can say goodbye to those patented John Murphy cheekbones.”

He scowls, then winces as it pulls the tender skin around his brow. The apples of his cheeks are flushed red and black, dark like rot. Half-shut from swelling, Clarke isn’t sure if he can actually see her.

“Did you try and steal from someone bigger than you?”

His eyes dart to the side. Clarke smirks, just a little bit.

“It’s hard out in the woods. Me and Emori were—“ He straightens then, enough that he can’t hide the flinch as his stitches pull in his gut. “Was there someone else with me?”

“What?”

“A girl. Little older, early twenties. Grounder. Has a fucked up hand?”

“No,” Clarke frowns, “you were alone.”

“Oh.” He slumps back into his covers. “Whatever.”

The thought of Murphy caring for someone other than himself is so… wrong. Unnatural. But exhaustion hangs from every bird-bone corner of his body and Clarke lets it go. For now.

“If she’s a Grounder, it’s a good thing she didn’t come with you. The guards would have shot her before she even got close.”

He eyes her, a shadow of that familiar gleam returning. “Are you guys still playing war?”

“Something like that.”

He has nowhere to go and Clarke has nowhere to put down her burdens except here, with a boy who doesn’t care about her but somehow still manages to be a better listener than her own mother. Murphy keeps surprisingly quiet as she backtracks the best she can, following the ashes of Finn’s pyre through memory. She tells him about the Pauna, the assassination attempt and the Bellamy’s infiltration as a guard. She tells him about the war meetings, the endless hours of planning, the Grounder army that stretched like a rolling black ocean. She tells him about the war.

She tells him about the Mountain.

And, well. She tells him things that haven’t left her head. The months of living in the cold, frozen up in a tree in an attempt to hunt because she didn’t learn how to do it properly. Raking berries through her hair and avoiding _ripas_ , learning Trigedasleng in order to blend in with people just as wild and desperate as her. Azgeda, Ontari, black blood. Lexa. The hollow devastation in her face when she found her beloved warriors slaughtered like dogs. How Arkadia balances on the knife-edge of war, stubbornly refusing to give up the guilty to save the many.

Murphy blinks slow and long when she’s done, running his eyes up her blue cloak with a new appreciation. He understands intimidation better than most.

“Funny how the Grounders listen to you more than our people, huh?”

“Yeah. Funny.”

“I’m not surprised.” He settles, winces, sighs. “Sky People were never any good at playing nice, even when we were only fighting ourselves. Now we’ve just got a common enemy to shoot.”

“You _agree_ with them?”

The swelling around his eyes reduces the potency of his glare, but not by much.

“I’ve been beaten, tortured, infected with a blood virus, hunted down and stabbed. All by them. Shouldn’t I?”

Clarke glances away, but not before noticing how he runs his thumbs along his fingernails, as if reassuring himself that they weren’t pulled out… this time.

Murphy glowers into the silence for a few seconds before scowling. “I should, but I don’t.”

“You… don’t?”

He shrugs. “We fell from the sky and killed a ton of their people. Not a great basis for friendship. The way Pike is waving his dick around, I’m amazed we aren’t all dead yet.”

Clarke leans back in her chair. Out of all the people in Arkadia, it’s _Murphy_ that understands without any justification?

Fuck, her head hurts.

“Besides,” he grins, but it’s more a baring of teeth, “ _Sky Crew_ have done jack-shit to earn my love. I’m not gonna cry if the Commander decides to raze this fucking prison to the ground.”

“I think that’s a little too far.”

“Is it?” His gaze slides to her. “When was the last time our people ever did anything for you?”

“Well—“

“Last time you saw them, you’d just massacred an entire civilization to free their kids. They been grateful to you, Princess? Said _thanks_?”

“No, but—“

“They only care about you when they need you, right? You’re only here because they’ve dug themselves in another hole they can’t get out of. Otherwise, would you even have come back?”

She remembers another conversation at a lighter time, Lexa’s smile soft and sure underneath her shawl. _You bring them peace._

“I… I don’t know.”

Murphy settles back, tired rather than smug. “There’s your answer. They didn’t want your help, so why do you keep defending them? Our people aren’t _good_ , Clarke. Not like they think they are.”

Clarke nibbles on her lip as the ebb and flow of the medical bay murmurs around them. In his snow-white bandages, Murphy looks entirely too frail in the cot, the only splash of colour in the room coming from the heavy-handed bruising banded over his brow and cheeks. A little boy who got burned pretending to be an adult.

But aren’t they all adults now, after what they’ve seen? Done?

“Maybe they aren’t,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean they deserve this. A lot of them are just trying to survive here like everyone else. They shouldn’t be punished because one part of their town went rogue.”

“They voted for the man, Princess.”

“And? You think that’s enough of a reason for them all to burn with him?”

A muscle flickers in Murphy’s jaw and Clarke presses onwards. “I killed those people so that _my_ people could finally have a chance to live, and I’ll be _damned_ if that gets taken away by a close-minded thug with a gun. I didn’t ask to be a leader, but they can’t trust the one they have so now they’re stuck with me.”

Cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders and eyes blazing, Murphy can’t repress the snort – no matter how much it hurts his swollen sinuses.

“What?”

“The Commander must be one hell of a person to put up with you all the time.”

It was obviously meant at a jab, but Clarke settles into her cloak instead. “She is.”

The conflicted, murmured tone to her voice alerts Murphy that he’s treaded into dangerous waters. He grimaces, partly from the rapidly dwindling amount of narcotic in his system, and partly because anything with too much emotion in it makes him itch.

“Look, Princess, as much as I’d love to hear you get all mushy about your Grounder warlord,” he notices her cheeks flare at that and files it away for later, “I can feel literally every square inch of my body starting to hurt. Can you get your mom to shoot me up with some more of that magic?”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no malice behind it. “I’ll see what I can do.”

As she gathers to leave, Clarke pauses, taking one last glimpse over her shoulder.

“What?” he mutters sourly, pinned under her gaze.

“You might be an asshole, Murphy, but at least you know how to let go. Bellamy could learn something about that.”

If it wasn’t so painful, his jaw would have been hanging to his chest. Clarke Griffin? Saying he was better than _Bellamy_?

His head thuds back against the pillow.

“Fucking hell, Emori. What kind of mess did you send me into?”

 

It’s another restless night before Lexa gets back to her.

Clarke is awoken by the silk-soft whisper of her name, wrenching her from dreams of smoke-shrouded ghosts and the strange vertigo of being in motion while lying absolutely still. She gasps for a moment, wiping the cold sweat from her brow, before feeling for her radio under the bed.

“Yeah?” she rasps, voice heavy and cracked with sleep.

“Did I wake you? I apologize, Clarke.”

“It’s fine.” Unbidden, the tension wound around her bones begins to bleed from her at the sound of Lexa’s voice. “What do you need?”

“We have your bomb. I believe it would be best if someone who knows what to do with this would take it.”

A flicker of excitement runs through her – hydrazine is in extremely high demand, as rare as it is dangerous. Having a hidden stash could very well be the tipping point. To what? Clarke has no idea. She’s always been a prepare now, plan later sort of girl.

“Probably a good idea. How are we going to trade it off?”

“The guards and lights posted around Arkadia’s walls make sneaking in nearly impossible. You would know much more about their weaknesses than I would.” A hesitation, the stutter of breath as Lexa holds it for a second. “And it would be… nice, if we could talk freely without worrying for a few moments.”

Clarke ruthlessly tamps down the leap in her chest, but can’t mask the way her fingers shake just the slightest. “Where should I meet you?”

“Can you make it to the forest? My people will recognize your cloak and guide you once you reach the trees.”

“I can try. I’ll let you know if I can’t make it.”

“Be safe.”

Clarke dresses in darkness, tying her boots as tight as they can go and wrapping her cloak around her shoulders. She doesn’t strap the gun to her hip but takes the knife from under her pillow, slipping it soundlessly into her boot before vanishing out the door.

She’s quick to run into complications. There’s only one way in or out of the compound, and that gate is heavily guarded and locked at all times. She could climb over the wall like she did to rescue Murphy, but with the roaming guards that’s sure to draw attention. Clarke sucks furiously on her lower lip, too overcome by her predicament to notice the shadow creeping up behind her until one hand is slapped over her mouth.

Her elbow connects with her attacker in a solid _whump_ of flesh meet flesh, and the grunt by her ear lets her know it met its mark. Hold loosened, she makes for the knife in her boot before she notices he isn’t fighting back.

“Fuck,” the person wheezes, “I should know better than to sneak up on you.”

“ _Monty?_ ” Clarke nearly deflates with the adrenaline that leaves her body, rushing to help him stand back upright. “I’m so sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

“I don’t blame you. Trying to creep up on _Wanheda_ has its risks, huh?”

“I don’t make it easy when people take me,” she agrees, flipping her hood back. “What are you doing out here?”

“I could say the same for you.”

“Meeting Lexa. Or trying to, at least. I don’t really know how to get out.”

A grin splits his face, roguish in the artificial light. “I can help you with that.”

The two of them skulk in the shadows of erected buildings, flitting from one safe spot to the next. The metallic _thump_ of the guard boots meeting walkway sound like clanking chains, and Clarke grits her teeth against the memories that well up like disturbed from the bottom of a swamp. They reach the wall eventually and Monty glances around before pulling on a panel of sheet metal, revealing a small but significant hole into the outside world.

Good start, but… “What about the guards?”

He shrugs, and they plaster themselves to the wall as another patrol goes by. She liked it better when it wasn’t a continuous walkway around but more of a few posts on certain places. Pike’s been making upgrades recently.

More to patrol means more guards on duty. Clarke glances through the metal grate and spots a familiar head of blonde hair.

“Harper,” she hisses, low enough that the girl doesn’t hear her. “Harper!”

Harper glances around, brow furrowed, before eventually looking down. Clarke gestures for her to come close and she does, albeit reluctantly, sucking in a sharp breath when she spies the hole in the wall.

“Clarke? What are you doing?”

“Paying someone a visit.”

She glances around dubiously. “What, the muzzle-end of a rifle?”

“Not if you’ll help me.”

The floodlights whine as they sweep the grounds, and Clarke and Monty have to dive behind a bush in order to remain unseen. She wonders what the surrounding villagers think, a light so bright it drowns out the stars in the sky.

“I don’t know, Clarke…”

“Harper,” she says, and the sharp tone of her voice makes the other two wince, “do you trust me?”

“Yes, but—“

“As much as Bellamy, that night you let him and Pike out?”

Harper looks away. The gun, held across her abdomen, droops to the ground. “What do you want?”

Clarke softens. “I don’t blame you, Harper. What happened that day was his fault, not yours. But I need to leave in order to try and fix the mess he made. I can’t do that without your help.”

She shuffles on her feet for a moment, the squeak of rubber on metal the only sound besides the wind. Clarke keenly feels the edge of eternity and how it hovers between them, able to be broken as easily as a call for help.

Eventually, Harper swallows and looks back at her. In the harsh glow of the spotlights, her eyes are bright and wet. “I thought I could trust him, you know? We’ve been through a lot together. But when I go to sleep at night, I can’t forget the screaming. It was over so quick, but you could smell it from here. The death.”

She takes the spotlight in front of them and yanks it, diverting the ray to the left and leaving a wedge of the plains just outside in shadow. “You’ve been through even more for all of us. I think you’re the only leader who hasn’t let me down yet.”

Clarke smiles and presses her palm against the grate for a moment, underneath the sole of Harper’s shoe. “Thank you.”

A sharp, jerky nod. “Hurry. I’m on duty until dawn, but after that you’ll probably get shot trying to come back.”

She slips out the wall with a quick hug to Monty, dashing across the plains as fast as her legs can carry her. Her heart thrums in her ears and any second now she’s expecting the shout, the whine of a bullet followed by the blooming pain it creates. But somehow, through the grace of something divine, no one sees her, and Clarke vanishes into the treeline like a spectre.

 

The woods are eerie at night. Each step echoes, the new undergrowth crackling underfoot, and the foliage seems to breathe with a life of its own. She feels eyes upon her shoulders and their gaze makes her heavy. Eventually, she comes to a slow stop and glances around, flipping her hood back to expose her golden hair.

_“I am Wanheda. I have come to speak with Heda at her request.”_

There’s nothing but the whisper of the winds through the leaves, but a soft, mechanical hiss to her right alerts her to a new presence. The Grounder peers at her through his mask before bowing, his matted furs streaked with blood and soot from the pyres.

“ _The honour is mine, Wanheda. I will lead you.”_

Despite having an escort, she still glances up at the trees as they walk. How do they get up there? She remembers what Bellamy mentioned back when they first came down, how they’d jump from the branches and then disappear again in an instant. A winch? Where did they get the technology?

They come to a clearing split in half by a river. The water runs quicksilver under the moon and sitting on a jutting rock is Lexa, hair accented by the white flame of all her metal clasps. In the darkness there is something sacred about her profile against the stars, a breath of something so profound it presses against Clarke’s lungs and makes it hard to exhale, but Lexa turns her head and the moment fades back into nothingness.

Her escort bows and shuffles away and Clarke moves slowly forward, settling next to Lexa with her legs dangling from the rock. A peace comes over her and ceases the murmuring in her head as Lexa smiles.

“It is good to see you, Clarke.”

Maybe a while ago she would have lied. Shrugged, kept to herself. But putting on a performance day after day is exhausting, the lies woven together even heavier than her cloak. So Clarke allows herself to smile back, to take in the way Lexa’s eyes are soft and bright with starshine, and to warm her hands on the flame that sputters to life inside her chest.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

Lexa rummages in the pocket hidden by her red sash, revealing a pouch filled with sweet, if a little crumbled, honeycakes. She pops one in her mouth, raising a brow at the question on Clarke’s face.

“I remember you were quite fond of these while in Polis. I doubt Arkadia has much of interest these days.”

Clarke takes one and lets it melt slowly on her tongue. The spice following the honey reminds her of sun-soaked mornings on the balconies of Polis tower, the lively bustle of the guards and apprentices a backdrop to the thriving city below. When she first came back, it was one of the few things she’d eat.

She tries not to think about the fact that Lexa remembers.

“Yeah, it’s mostly cured meat, under-ripe vegetables and whatever flour is left over from the winter.” Clarke grimaces. “ _Poorly_ cured meat.”

“Your plan?”

“Still going. It’s too early to tell, but it better work. I’ve had to burn two sets of pants already.” At Lexa’s questioning glance, Clarke’s grimace deepens. “We don’t have anything that gets the smell of that much shit out of linens.”

Lexa turns back to face the river, but Clarke sees the smirk she struggles to tamp down anyway. “I’ve been told vinegar is quite good for that.”

“That’s what Mom said. But we don’t have any.”

“Unfortunate. Strangely enough, the sun is also effective.”

“Probably something to do with the UV rays.”

Lexa looks at her blankly.

“It’s invisible light that comes from the sun. It’s why you tan.”

“Invisible… light? Clarke, are you trying to trick me? I do not appreciate being taken for a fool.”

“No, I promise! We learn it in school. It’s like when…” she trails off as the corner of Lexa’s mouth twitches. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Lexa’s eyes dance with mirth. “You must be mistaken. Heda does not joke, after all.”

“Of course not.” Clarke snatches another honeycake with an affronted air, but sighs and leans back until she can see the stars. They’re even brighter here than Polis, a god that bled into the velveteen fabric of space until it washed away the darkness.

The air turns heavy. Lexa waits for Clarke, as she always does.

“I’m worried,” she admits quietly, once they’ve settled. “My people are terrified, but Pike thinks he can get out of this.”

“Do they trust in him?”

“Not like yours trust in you,” she says before she can stop it.

Lexa chews slowly on her honeycake, eyes thoughtful on the treeline. Clarke watches the muscles in her jaw ripple up to her temple and itches for charcoal. “That is to be expected. Heda is guided by the Spirit; to them, I am more than human. Divine leaders are easier to put faith into than mortal ones.”

“But… this Spirit. It can’t be real, can it? It isn’t a god.”

“You cannot interact with it, but I can. Does that make it real, or unreal?”

Clarke grimaces. “I never was very good at philosophy.”

“It is much like your invisible light. We cannot see it, or sense it, but it exists. It shapes the world around us.”

“But we have sensors for that kind of thing.”

Lexa taps her forehead. “Then I am your sensor. Through me, the Spirit touches the earth. I do not claim to understand it, but upon my Ascension I heard a hundred voices in my head and they have not left since. Quieted, perhaps. Stilled. But they are there, and they serve the Spirit even in death as I do in life. My people recognize this legacy and respect it, even if there are some that would… disagree.”

She turns. The corner of her mouth curls upwards, knowing. “We are not so different, you and me.”

“I don’t have dead people in my head, Lexa.” (A lie, but not quite like how she intended.)

“No. But you know what it is like to walk in the footsteps of something divine, don’t you?”

The wind whistles, and Clarke pulls her cloak tighter around her shoulders. In the reflection of the river Lexa drinks in the moonlight while Clarke seems to bend it away, brushing it from herself like one would streaks of dirt.

Still, she scoffs. “You believe it too?”

A shrug. “All myths are based in truth, no matter how small. _Wanheda_ came from the sky once, too.”

“From… the sky?” She thinks of Lexa’s war-table, the black coin balanced on the Mountain’s tallest peak as offering and gratitude alike. “What do you mean?”

“Now is not the time for a history lesson, Clarke. We were speaking of your people.”

Clarke huffs and knocks her shoulder against Lexa’s, takes some small satisfaction when she nearly pitches into the river. “Tease.”

“I’ll tell you another night. I swear it.”

She sounds as solemn as she did that night, her face warm and open and dust on her knees. The light is the same now, too, and maybe some small part of Clarke is starting to believe what Lexa’s people do. That this single girl is both the first and last of her kind despite the trail of black-blooded corpses behind her, something caught between the human and the divine. Something other, a spirit too big to be trapped in one vessel for long. Clarke wonders if, when the Spirit demanded her body, she knew that her soul would be forfeit too?

But then, her people don’t know her like this, either. Grin crooked despite her words and entirely too young for the burden she bears. They don’t know the way her head tilts or how her fingers knot, or how her hair starts the day in a wild tangle of curls – Heda has done a very good job at keeping Lexa hidden all these years, but Clarke sees her because she doesn’t know how else to look.

(There was only one other person with such a privilege and now she sleeps between the roots of the great trees that sheltered her. Clarke wonders if Lexa can still hear her name sometimes, through the leaves grown broad and green from her ashes.)

Clarke can’t stop herself from tucking a stray braid behind Lexa’s ear, greedy for the sharp stutter of breath that whistles through Lexa’s nose.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Her fingers fan out until her fingertips touch the razor-fine hook of Lexa’s jaw. She closes her eyes and leans, just the slightest, but still enough that Costia’s ghost settles oddly into Clarke’s hollow bones. It’s not… wrong, but she feels like she’s stealing something that wasn’t meant to be hers.

Lexa’s eyes open. The moonlight makes them glow just that little bit, a fraction of divinity, and maybe the spirits walk in human skin after all.

She turns until her lips brush a phantom kiss against Clarke’s scarred hands. “You should head back,” she murmurs low, rough, and Clarke never thought she’d hold something good in them again without breaking it. “We don’t want them to notice you’ve left.”

“Yeah.” Her hand drops; the chasm in her chest aches. “Do you have the hydrazine?”

Lexa carefully leans over the side of the rocks and pulls a small canister from the shadow. It’s a little bigger than her last run-in with it, cap screwed on firmly and so brightly coloured it seems fake. Lexa looks like she’s handling a corpse.

Still, Clarke makes sure to cradle it gently.

“What could you do with that?”

“A lot of things.”

“Is it enough?”

She eyes it critically, though she’s the wrong person to be asking. “Worst case scenario, we could blow up all of Arkadia. Instant incineration. No more fighting.”

“Do not joke about that, Clarke.”

She gives a mirthless smile. “I’m not.”

 


End file.
